


That Partitioning of the Things of Youth

by wearitcounts (Sher_locked_up)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Eventual Smut, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Reichenbach, Relationship Issues, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:48:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sher_locked_up/pseuds/wearitcounts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor Trevor is in town, and nobody's happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [That Partitioning of the Things of Youth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3490133) by [Cynthia_zh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynthia_zh/pseuds/Cynthia_zh)



> "The truth was that for some months he had been going through that partitioning of the things of youth wherein it is decided whether or not to die for what one no longer believes. In the dead white hours in Zurich staring into a stranger's pantry across the upshine of a street-lamp, he used to think that he wanted to be good, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in."
> 
> — F. Scott Fitzgerald, _Tender is the Night_  
> 
> 
>   
>  p.s. My headcanon for Victor Trevor is Idris Elba, so, you know, that's fun.
> 
> Also, please see the end notes for some beautiful pieces of art that some lovely people have drawn of scenes from this story. They are all so gorgeous, and I am so grateful.

 

“Sherlock? Sherlock  _Holmes_?”

John paused mid-bite to watch Sherlock as he groaned and hunched down over his dinner plate, attempting to look for all the world as though he were entirely fascinated with his  _linguine alle vongole_. He poked Sherlock in the arm with the handle of his steak knife.

“Be  _nice_.”

“These insipid  _fans_ ,” Sherlock spat out, raising his serviette to his lips. He pressed the linen against his mouth and refolded it in his lap.

“It wouldn’t kill you to make believe for a little while, to make someone happy. I’ve seen you sham for cases. Think of it as research,” John said.

Sherlock's gaze flickered over John's face, bemused. “Research?”

“Yes, on how not to be a giant berk,” John hissed before rising from his seat in greeting. Sparing John a rather affronted look, Sherlock rolled his eyes, but followed, sliding from behind the table and standing with a preternatural grace that seemed to John a bit unfair given the fact that Sherlock was a complete wanker most of the time.

Sherlock looked up and breathed out a short but unmistakable “Oh,  _no._ ”

John tried to catch his eye, brow raised, but Sherlock’s focus was frozen. John surveyed the man crossing Angelo’s and approaching their corner booth. He was tall, and handsome like a panther, all sleek, close-cropped black hair and deep-set eyes angled high over a full mouth that was framed by a strong jaw. He had an intimidating torso, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, and his abdomen was slender, a fitted dress shirt revealing not even the slightest softening around the waistline that there should be as a concession to his age, which John estimated to be about forty, going by the noble streaks of silver at his temple. He was betrayed even less by his skin, all rich mahogany satin sloping creaseless over pronounced cheekbones and a regal forehead. He wore neatly groomed facial hair that was more than stubble, but not quite a beard, black and grey in equal measure.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he repeated as he reached Sherlock, extending a well-muscled arm to hold out his hand. His voice was deep and rich and poured from his mouth like hot buttered rum. “And here I was, thinking I didn’t know a  _soul_ in London anymore, and then I run into  _you_  of all people! It’s been  _years_.”

John immediately noticed the man even had several centimetres of height on Sherlock; this unnerved him tremendously.

“Victor,” Sherlock replied, his voice tight. John had always thought of Sherlock as having rather enormous hands, even for a tall bloke, but once one of them was enveloped by Victor’s, it looked positively dwarfed. “John, this is Victor Trevor; we were at university together. Briefly. Victor, this is John Watson.”

John could barely wrap his fingers around Victor’s palm, but he kept his grip as firm as he was able. “Pleasure,” he said.

John glanced over at Sherlock, looking for a hint as to what note he ought to strike. Sherlock wore his guarded face, the mask that slipped into place every time Mycroft was around or whenever they ran into somebody who knew Sherlock before John. It stabbed John fiercely in his gut, because it was that face that had haunted him incessantly while Sherlock was away, when Sherlock was dead and all John could do was ruminate on all the times he’d seen it, all the times he’d disappointed Sherlock. He’d spent weeks, months reliving the time Sherlock had called him  _his_   _friend_  and John had corrected him, had called himself  _a colleague_ , had been too afraid of what some smarmy City boy would think if John were gay; Sherlock’s expression had wilted ever so slightly before he’d regained himself, schooled his features and used that exact face as lacquer over his palpable dismay. He’d think about the moment he’d viciously lashed out at Sherlock, had said  _you machine_  with all the venom he could muster, and if he’d been paying attention he might have seen Sherlock slip ever so briefly before steeling himself in all that armour that had in the end really been for John’s own protection.

Sherlock didn’t meet anyone’s eye as he gestured toward John.

“John is my,” Sherlock paused, and he cleared his throat, his hesitation uncharacteristic and confounding. “Flatmate,” he concluded warily, “we… share a flat.”

John smiled benignly. Victor’s brow furrowed. “You share a flat?”

John still didn’t fancy himself a detective, but he also hadn’t spent years blogging about Sherlock Holmes without learning a few things about deduction; all at once, he saw Victor’s unspoken line of inquiry light up above his head like so much brilliant white text:  _A flatshare? At your age? Haven’t you come into any family money? Haven’t you met someone? Are you really still unattached? Are you really all alone?_

As both of the men in front of him were members of what was perceived to be polite society, John knew Victor wouldn’t say any of it, and Sherlock certainly wouldn’t acknowledge it, however much he must know precisely what was just implied. John could just let it lie. He could let them exchange cool pleasantries and even cooler goodbyes, and never have to think on it again.

Only John had made a promise to himself when he’d got Sherlock back, and that promise was never to let Sherlock look that way again, that way that pulled so roughly at John’s solar plexus that he couldn’t quite breathe properly just remembering that it had ever happened and that he had been the cause of it; so, without so much as a  _by your leave_ , John braced himself, reached out and caught Sherlock’s right hand with his left, squeezed briefly, and winked at Victor Trevor.

“Yes,” John answered, as Sherlock’s eyes had gone large and his mouth had gone small and he looked as though he was having one of his rare, slow moments that required John’s lead. “We share a flat.”

Victor grinned, revealing a row of neat white teeth. It was a smile that bordered on predatory, and John was abruptly struck with the inexplicable urge to place himself between Victor and Sherlock. He settled for moving several centimetres closer to Sherlock and grinning back.

Victor quirked an eyebrow as his gaze volleyed back and forth between Sherlock and John. “I never thought I’d see the day,” he teased.

Sherlock coughed and cleared his throat again. “Yes, well,” he glanced over at John and smirked with one side of his mouth. “Neither did I.”

John let go of Sherlock’s hand and batted playfully at his arm in a way he hoped was vaguely boyfriend-like. “Come on now, it’s all right if you tell people. You know I don’t mind.” He leaned conspiratorially toward Victor. “It’s still early days. We’re flatmates first, you see, were for quite a long time. I needed a place back when I first left the army, and Sherlock was kind enough to take in an old soldier as a favour to a mutual friend. Then we started working together, and well…” he waved an arm, “here we are!” God, he was laying it on thick; he wished he were better at this shamming business. He didn’t know how Sherlock did it so easily, morphed into an exact replica of whomever it was convenient for him to be at a moment’s notice. John, feeling entirely out of his depth, not just a little awkward, and wholly unable to believe his own boldness, kept his eyes deliberately averted from Sherlock’s expression, which he hoped at least didn’t look as though John had just sprouted several additional limbs and two extra heads.

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” Victor said. “I thought I recognised your name. John Watson, the famous blogger.”

“Ah, well,” John said, “wouldn’t be anything if it weren’t for this one,” he nodded toward Sherlock.

“Charming,” Victor replied, mostly in Sherlock’s direction, and then glanced at a wristwatch that looked as though it cost more than a mid-range sedan. “Listen, I’ve got to dash, but I’d really love to catch up, Sherlock. It’s just been ages, and I’m only back in town for a few weeks—I’ve got this charity do, next week. So what do you say; dinner, tomorrow night? You must come, both of you.”

“Actually—”

“I won’t take no for an answer, Sherlock.” Victor looked very much like a person who’d never been in the habit of taking no for any kind of answer, and the thought made John frown inwardly. “I’ve still got my flat in London. You’ll remember the address, yes?” John’s eyes shot wide as Sherlock nodded, his face stricken in a way John had never seen before. “Then it’s settled. I’ll see you both there tomorrow, say seven-thirty? Good.”

Victor clapped John on the arm. “Lovely to meet you, John. I’ll look forward to hearing all about what Sherlock’s been up to these days.” He lowered his voice. “I mean, beyond all that nasty business a couple of years back. Read about it in the papers. Must have been dreadful for you, really.” His eyes crinkled in sympathy. “But, nevermind all that. I’ll want to hear everything, just  _everything_  about you two. Until tomorrow!”

With another wide grin and a tip of his head, Victor turned and exited the restaurant, his gait as smooth as the rest of him, and Sherlock let out a long, low breath that sounded like it had been held for hours.

John sat back down and calmly resumed cutting up his steak. Sherlock cautiously joined him, twirling pasta around his fork without lifting it to his mouth and staring at a point on the table between them. After a few moments had passed, John swallowed the bite he’d been chewing, took a long pull from his water glass, and set down his flatware.

“Now, I’m just wondering,” he began, his tone deceptively tranquil, “why it is that you can generally be depended upon to be rude to and dismissive of ninety-nine- _point_ - _nine_  percent of the populace, and yet just now, you’ve decided to become all jolly and social, and agree to have dinner with a person you’ve not only not seen in years, but who is currently labouring under the false impression that we are, in fact, a couple?”

Sherlock flinched as the edge of John’s voice grew sharp toward the end of his speech. “Well it wasn’t  _my_ idea to pretend that we’re a couple,” he said defensively.

“Not really answering my question, Sherlock.”

“You could have said no just as easily as I could!” Sherlock slumped in his seat and looked utterly miserable. “He took me by surprise, John. I haven’t seen Victor in a very long time; and he’s always been like that, and I wasn’t always… I haven’t always been—” Sherlock cut himself off in frustration, taking an angry swig of wine and drumming his fingers wildly against the table.

“Okay, all right,” John replied, covering Sherlock’s anxious hand briefly with his own, feeling more than a little blindsided at this particularly vulnerable display. Since Sherlock had returned, he’d been a bit more human, eating more often and sleeping almost regularly, and every once in a while, daring to betray an emotion beyond his usual disgust with the stupidity of mere mortals; this, however, this desperate insecurity, was entirely without precedent. “I don’t know why I did that, to be honest, the couple thing. He just seemed so smug. I didn’t like the way he was looking at you. As if you were someone to pity.”

“Aren’t I?” Sherlock asked wryly, fiddling with his serviette. He smiled at that, but it was a little sad, and it made John’s chest clench something awful. “Victor’s made a fortune many times over in imports. He’s spent that last ten years in Dubai, I imagine living in a penthouse and working from a lounge chair by the pool. I’m thirty-seven, have a made up job, and an older brother who monitors everything I do via CCTV.”

“Well, I’m forty-one and haven’t got the brother, so ta for that.” John grinned and clinked his wine glass against Sherlock’s. The side of Sherlock’s mouth twitched a little.

“Mycroft monitors you, too.”

John rolled his eyes. “Don’t remind me.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger wearily. “I don’t suppose we can cancel?”

Sherlock snorted. “He’ll keep calling and asking, and eventually, he’ll just come round to collect us himself.” He paused. “Victor can be very… persistent.”

“He does seem the type,” John agreed, trying to quell the uneasy feeling that tumbled around in his gut at the assertion. “All right. If we’re going to do this, we’ll need some ground rules.”

 

 *

 

The brief window into Sherlock’s strangely vulnerable psyche shut just as quickly as it had opened, and John was both puzzled and relieved to see him puffed up in all his natural arrogance as he stood in the living room of their flat, watching for the arrival of the taxi they’d ordered and waiting for John to gather his wallet and keys. They’d come up with a fairly straightforward set of ground rules, and John was cautiously optimistic that, as long as Victor didn’t press too hard and Sherlock stayed on his best behaviour, they just might be able to get through the evening with a modicum of grace.

“All right?” John asked, shrugging on his coat.

“Yes, of course.” Sherlock slipped into his own. “The taxi’s just arrived.”

“And you remember the rules?”

Sherlock sighed impatiently. “Yes, John. I’m not a child.”

“Humour me.”

Sherlock rolled his head back and put his hands on his hips, huffing an exasperated breath before favouring John with one of his patented,  _why is it again that I allow you to speak_ looks, but he relented just the same. “One, touching is permitted only on the knees, elbows, shoulders, hands, and, if absolutely necessary, kissing is permitted on only the cheek; two, when asked questions about our lives and our relationship, tell the truth, as much as possible, to avoid confusion or conflicting stories; and, my  _personal_ favourite, three, neither party shall, under  _any_ circumstances, be persuaded to divulge any private romantic or otherwise intrusive information, particularly of the sexual variety, even if said information is, in fact, invented,” he recited.

“Quite right,” John agreed. “Let’s go, then.”

The ride to Victor’s flat was mostly silent, John staring out of the window as the architecture grew more and more impressive and the street signs indicated wealthier and wealthier neighbourhoods. He raised an eyebrow and looked over at Sherlock. “I thought you said you were at university together?”

“Briefly.” Sherlock didn’t look up from whatever he was tapping onto the screen of his phone.

“And that he made his fortune later, in Dubai?”

“Yes.”

“Then how is it again that you’re familiar with his current London address?” A thing John had learned about Sherlock was that he was less likely to lie outright than he was to lie by omission, and so really it was better to ask any question that came to mind, however insignificant it might seem, or how many  _can you really be this stupid_ expressions he had to endure to get Sherlock to answer.

“Victor’s family had money. They’ve owned this flat for quite some time; he made his fortune in enough time to salvage a good portion of their properties in the UK.” Sherlock slipped his phone into his jacket pocket.

“Salvage?”

“His father—look, it’s not really important.” Sherlock’s voice had tipped over into the tone that John recognized as the end of his patience. “Victor was two years ahead of me at university, and we were—well, we were acquaintances. I’m familiar with several of his addresses.”

There was something about the way Sherlock had repeated  _familiar_ that irked John, but he let it fall into the dark space between them in the cab as he searched for a change of subject. Surely he needn’t sound  _so_ much the part of the jealous boyfriend; especially before they’d even arrived at dinner. “You remembered the wine, yeah?”

“John, must you really use absolutely every opportunity afforded you to imply that I am incapable of behaving like a civilised adult?”

“Only so long as you use every opportunity to prove it,” John sniped, and immediately regretted it. “No—listen, I’m sorry Sherlock, really. Of course you remembered the wine. I’m probably just nervous I’ll get thrown out for using the wrong fork or spilling something all over myself.”

Sherlock grunted, but it was a good-natured sound, and the silence that followed was peaceful for a moment.

“Victor isn’t really like that,” he said finally.

John didn’t respond. He wasn’t yet convinced he was all that interested to see what exactly Victor Trevor really  _was_ like.

 

*

 

John kept quiet even as they were welcomed by a doorman who already knew their names, even as they entered an ornate lift all done up in polished wood and gold plate, even as Sherlock pressed the button marked  _PH_ , even as they found themselves standing in front of a lavish set of double doors that were as wide as the entire kitchenette in 221B.

The righthand door opened and Victor ushered them inside with a large, sweeping gesture. “Sherlock! I still can’t quite believe it’s you!” Victor pulled Sherlock by his offered hand into a fierce embrace and Sherlock sputtered a bit as Victor thumped him soundly on the back. He squeezed and then released Sherlock before taking John’s hand warmly between both of his own. “John, so glad you could make it as well.”

“Ta,” John replied, and handed over the bottle of wine Sherlock had tossed into John’s lap in an effort to more easily access his wallet in the taxi. He wondered briefly if it was a conscious move on Sherlock’s part to give John the job of wine-bearer, some mild attempt to indicate his role in the proceedings; regardless, he’d been pleasantly surprised that Sherlock had paid for the cab this time, but he supposed that was just an attempt at evening the stakes. Sherlock never liked to owe people things, if his relationship with Mycroft was anything to go by. “Lovely to be here,” John said easily as they entered the foyer.

It  _was_  rather lovely, John could admit. What looked very much to John like ostentatious old money from the outside had been converted to sleek, modern minimalist inside, all right angles and crisp edges and cool palette. The first floor appeared to have an entirely open plan; to one side was an island worktop separating a chrome-and-marble kitchen from a large living room done in dove and charcoal greys with long, low leather sofas, matching coffee and end tables in some kind of burnished metal and foggy glass, and, the only real decor in the room other than the furniture, a set of several lamps that looked like stark white pyramids on top of wide ebony globes. To the other side there was a large dining area with a very long black table surrounded by twelve thick, solid black chairs, the entire set composed of heavy, sharp-cornered squares and rectangles. In the center of the table there was a tall white vase that held three calla lilies. There were three place settings at the far end of the table, also clean white against the rich black of the stained wood, with two wine glasses, a water goblet, and, to John’s dismay, at least six types of silverware each. Straight in front was a staircase made of uncomfortably transparent fibreglass, strung together by thin metal rods, with a hanging metal railing on either side, leading up to a second floor that, from this vantage point, revealed only a low balcony wall made of similar fibreglass, and beyond that, a U-shaped hallway with a half-dozen closed white-and-chrome doors. The whole of the flat, with the probable exception of the kitchen, was done in thick white carpet, boasted walls that were nearly entirely window, and was lit dimly, perfectly, by overhanging fixtures that were simply giant spherical light bulbs strung from metal chains at odd intervals, giving the effect of softly glowing, ambient bubbles floating high in the night air.

It was interesting, in a sense; the flat wasn’t to John’s taste, not at all, but it was lovely the way Sherlock was lovely, the way he supposed Victor was lovely, the kind of thing that was beautiful, but ethereal and untouchable, the kind of thing that he knew would always remain out of his range but for which he still felt a sort of deep-seated craving just the same.

“Look at that, Sherlock,” Victor breathed as he accepted the bottle from John. “You remembered.”

John hadn’t noticed anything particular about the wine, other than that it looked a sight more expensive than the cabernet sauvignon he often picked up from Sainsbury’s for under ten quid, but at Victor’s reaction, he stole another glance at the label:  _Château-Lascombes Margaux._

“Victor used to sneak cases of this into the dormitories for me,” Sherlock offered by way of explanation.

Victor chuckled, all honey and velvet. “I used to tell Sherlock, they won’t mind that you have wine—”

“They’ll just mind that it’s French,” Sherlock cut in, his own laugh a low rumble that both ran over and complimented Victor’s. John smiled gamely, and looked carefully between Victor and Sherlock. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard anyone apart from himself make Sherlock laugh before.

The two were all but a matched set, their well-formed figures swathed in sharply tailored shirts and bespoke trousers. Sherlock wore his black Spencer Hart with the pale blue underneath that made him appear ghostlike in the most attractive of ways, and turned his eyes every sort of color; Victor was in something medium grey and pinstriped with a waistcoat rather than a jacket. His shirt was crisp and white and his rich skin gleamed against the cut of his collar. John felt a little silly and small in his brown trousers and blue cardigan, even if it was cashmere and a Christmas gift from Sherlock himself.

“Please, let me take your coats,” Victor said, and they each obediently piled their outerwear over his extended arm. “Make yourselves at home—Sherlock, you know your way. I’ll just be a moment.” He held up the bottle again. “This should breathe, of course, but can I get you both drinks for now?”

John looked pointedly at Sherlock.

“Oh, anything you’ve got in will do,” Sherlock said. John sighed. It would be too much to hope, he supposed, to be give even the smallest clue as to what was appropriate to request or expect.

“Whatever he’s having will be fine, thanks.”

John followed Sherlock into the living area. “You know, you could have warned me everything was going to be so posh,” he said in a low growl.

Sherlock turned to look at him and blinked as though while he knew John had spoken, he hadn’t an earthly clue what had just been said. He shrugged, selected a sofa to sink down upon, and John sat next to him, a bit awkwardly unsure of how close they should be. Sherlock smirked and threw an arm over the back of the sofa, draping it parallel to the line of John’s shoulders, and John unconsciously leaned in toward him.

“Comfortable?” Sherlock asked, crooking an eyebrow.

“Shut up.”

Victor returned with a tumbler of something brown for each of them. John sniffed and then sipped. Scotch;  _expensive_ scotch. Well, that was one point to Victor, then.

“Now,” Victor said, taking a seat on the sofa perpendicular, his own glass almost completely hidden, wrapped in his strong, elegant fingers, “I want to hear all about everything.”

John laughed. “Can you be more specific?”

Victor smiled. “I’ll confess I was a little curious and may have done some internet research. Your blog’s very popular these days, John.”

“It helps drum up the business,” John agreed. “Though Sherlock’s got his own blog as well.”

“I’ve never missed an entry,” Victor replied, his eyes steady on Sherlock’s passive face. “In truth, I found out you were still alive because I’d subscribed. I wasn’t keeping up with the London papers at the time, and your… reemergence caused rather a smaller stir than did your suicide.”

Sherlock shifted uncomfortably, brought his glass to his mouth and took a small sip before answering. “Yes, well. Mycroft thought it would be better to be… demure about that. A quiet public pardon, for those who needed to hear it. Not that anything gets by the  _fans_.” On anyone else’s lips, the word would have sounded self-aggrandising; Sherlock was only annoyed by the concept of celebrity. John suspected that was because his minor fame made it far more difficult for his natural churlishness to scare off the general public. The fans seemed to fetishise it.

John glared at Sherlock a little. He didn’t know if he liked Victor, but that didn’t excuse Sherlock’s bad behaviour, and he couldn’t deny the experience of being in the dark about Sherlock didn’t hit him just a touch close to home. “He means he’s sorry you had to find out like that, and that he should have contacted you before updating his  _bloody —_his blog.” John caught himself breathing a little heavily through his nostrils and wasn’t remotely certain it was all in aid of Victor.

For Victor’s part, he simply shrugged, just an elegant rippling of his shoulders beneath his dress shirt. “He doesn’t, and he wouldn’t. And it’s all right; it’s not as though I’d kept in touch either. But I did read your blog,” he directed the last sentence at Sherlock, bestowing him with a heavy, inscrutable look, “since the very first entry.”

Sherlock looked away. “I think,” he cleared his throat, “before dinner, if you don’t mind… upstairs, yes?”

Victor waved a graceful hand toward the stairs. “By all means. Third door on the left, in the corner—well, you know.”

John spared a thought about how well he could do without the constant reminders of whatever complex history there appeared to be between Sherlock and Victor, keeping his eyes on Sherlock as he mounted the seemingly gravity-defying steps, until he noticed Victor watching him, grinning widely.

“Love to watch him leave, eh?”

John blushed furiously. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed Sherlock’s arse before; it was near impossible not to, a figure like that, lazing about the flat as he did, lying belly-down on the sofa all deliciously lithe and supple, and topped off like some vulgar dessert with two perfectly moulded scoops of ice cream. It was just that usually whilst he was lazing about, he was also in the process of doing his utmost to irritate the hell out of John, and well, that wasn’t particularly sexy.

Now, seeing him through the fond, albeit fabricated, gaze of Sherlock’s ersatz boyfriend, John felt a frisson of appreciation that he quickly quelled with a small cough. “Still sort of getting used to all of it, I guess.”

“It must have been so hard for you, when he,” he paused delicately. “Well, when he died.”

“We weren’t together then.”

“No, perhaps not. But you were, really. You must have thought about it all the time; how could you not? Living with someone, working with him, spending all your time together,” Victor’s voice was smooth and confident, and he crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in his seat as he added, “especially someone to whom you’re obviously so attracted.”

John huffed out a short laugh. It wasn’t a revelation; he’d come to terms with the fact that Sherlock was sexy in a sort of inevitable way that was resistant to reason, and to this fact he was not immune. Still, there was something about Victor pointing it out so cavalierly, as though it were a simple and disposable sentiment, that John found unaccountably grating. “Don’t think I really gave it much thought, until he was gone,” he replied curtly. It was neither an admission, nor a lie.

He gave John that heavy look again, calculating and impenetrable. “Death can make a person do funny things, I know that much. I can’t even imagine what sorts of ideas reanimation inspires.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, so he settled with taking another sip of his scotch.

“I must say I admire you, John,” Victor continued.

“Oh?” John looked down as he swirled the amber liquid in his glass and wondered what about him could possibly inspire admiration in someone like Victor.

“Sherlock’s not easy, is he?” Victor’s smile was at once sympathetic and predatory and John thought he looked like a jungle cat. “I mean, he’s gorgeous—I’ll grant you that—and you can overlook a lot for that kind of gorgeous. But there’s a lot, and then there’s  _Sherlock_.”

“I suppose everybody changes, with time.” John found himself clenching his free hand into a tight fist and forcibly relaxed it. “Even Sherlock. He’s not the same person he was at uni, I’m fairly certain.” It seemed as though Victor’s opinion of Sherlock was in constant flux between open adulation and facetious dismissal, and John wondered when he’d earned the right to talk to him, talk  _about_  him, in such an intimate way.

Victor laughed, that deep and lovely laugh that set John at ease even against his will. “Oh, I should say not. Still, though. It can’t be easy. He’d never make it easy.” Victor’s eyes seemed to cloud over then.

John thought on that. The funny thing was, Sherlock  _did_  seem to be trying to make things easy. He’d come back and proceeded to take up precisely the same space that he had occupied in John’s life prior to his death. It was as though he made a concentrated effort to be shaped exactly as he’d always been, equipped with the same sharp edges and fiddly, poky bits that nudged up against John in ways both aggravating and exhilarating. He took care of himself a bit better, maybe, and he favoured John with appreciative glances or expressions of gratitude a bit more, but he was the same Sherlock, and whatever horrors or pleasures that should have warped him over the years were smoothed over and tucked away for John’s comfort. If anything, it was John who had changed, John who was making things difficult. For all his guilt over everything that had happened, there was at least as much anger, and John knew he’d taken up the habit of lashing out at Sherlock for no reason, allowing himself to get irritable over things he’d have previously not even noticed himself overlooking. After Sherlock died, against all odds, the Sherlock-shaped hole inside John had begun to heal; now it felt as if it was being worked against, pushed back open, the edges rubbed raw.

John was broken from his reverie by the sound of Sherlock’s feet on the fibreglass stairs. “Speak of the devil,” Victor said.

“Should my ears be burning?” Sherlock called out.

“No more than the roast potatoes, if I take them out now,” Victor replied smoothly. “Shall we?”

John looked over at Victor, who winked back at him. He suddenly didn’t feel terribly keen on roast potatoes.


	2. Chapter 2

The meal was delicious, and, to John’s relief, much more straightforward than the place settings had led him to believe. The conversation flowed easily enough so long as John served as a foil off of which the lofty repartee reflected, in Victor’s case taking the form of trite stories about uni days, or Sherlock’s showing off about The Work. There was still something underlying, something curling thick and tense that John couldn’t quite unravel but he noticed all the same; and so he chose to avoid it altogether, falling easily, as was his habit, into the role of facilitating a discourse that would otherwise be completely shuttered by Sherlock’s debatably unconscious asocial tendencies.

After the meal, Victor had insisted upon showing them his library. It was behind one of those mysterious white-and-chrome doors on the second floor, and it appeared to be the only room that had been left to its former old world opulence. The walls were, from floor to ceiling, entirely made up of heavy oak shelves, stained dark and overflowing with books; gorgeous books, leather-bound books with gold-embossed titles in more languages than John could recognise, all colours and sizes, some freshly printed and others centuries old. There were four dark brown leather club chairs, studded with heavy bronze, facing one another in the centre of the room, sitting atop a thick Oriental rug and surrounding a heavy wooden coffee table. The whole room was done up in carpets and draperies and wallpaper in all the deep warm jewel tones the rest of the flat was missing, and John felt immediately more comfortable than he had throughout the rest of the evening. Something about the library felt almost like an offshoot of 221B, like he could see where Sherlock fit with Victor, and his chest tightened a little at the idea.

Victor made his way to the liquor cabinet at the far side of the room, pouring them a snifter of brandy each, as Sherlock began to inspect the books. John left Sherlock to it, content to fall back into the easy elegance of one of the massive leather chairs before accepting his glass from Victor. He felt lazy, heavy with food and three different wine pairings, and the edges of reality were starting to blur and buzz at the corners of his senses.

Sherlock seemed unaffected, sharp as ever, peering through the shelves with rabid interest. True to form, Sherlock had done more poking at than consuming of his food, and almost ignored the wine entirely. “You’ve arranged everything on the Dewey decimal system,” he noted.

“I thought it was the thing to do,” Victor replied dryly, “seeing as it’s a library and all.”

John chuckled and sipped his brandy. Sherlock ignored the glass Victor held out for him, so Victor placed it on the table and joined Sherlock in his exploration. “And I see you’ve found the five-nineties.”

Sherlock pulled a book from the shelf he had been perusing.

The expression on his face was enough to coax John from the comfort of his chair. He crossed the room and peered over Sherlock’s shoulder as he gently traced the title of the book with tentative fingers. “That’s in French,” John said.

Victor smiled as though John were a child who had stumbled upon a particularly charming observation quite by accident. “Well spotted. _La Vie des Abeilles_.” Of course Victor spoke French. He and Sherlock probably sat up every night together at uni, drinking French wine and talking to each other about worldly things in fluent French. “ _The Life of the Bee_. Maeterlinck’s well-regarded guide to apiology ”

“I’d forgotten,” Sherlock said, the words coming a bit funny from his throat despite not having imbibed any of the brandy, which was currently burning and tickling at John’s stomach in a most pleasing way. “I… I can’t quite believe you’ve kept it.”

Victor put a hand over Sherlock’s where it grazed the cover of the book. “I thought of sending it to you so many times, Bee. I didn’t know if you’d want to hear from me. I did keep it, though. In case.” Victor’s voice had dropped to a tender place and John shifted uncomfortably, realising suddenly how very much he hated all things French, even if the wine _had_ been exceptional.

There was a silence that went on a beat longer than John found tolerable, and he broke it by taking an exaggerated swig of his brandy. “This is lovely stuff, Victor, just lovely,” he said, loudly, and then the burn hit his throat and he coughed, sputtering little flecks of liquor and spit across his lower lip and chin, and then, adding insult to injury, proceeded to rather unattractively wheeze. Victor thumped him soundly on the back.

“Steady on,” Victor laughed. He moved his hand from Sherlock’s hand to grip John’s near shoulder as he wrapped his other arm around John’s back.  “I like a man who knows how to enjoy himself.”

Sherlock looked up, finally, as if he’d only just realised John was in the room. “John are you all right?”

John wheezed once more, and cleared his throat with what he hoped was an affirmative sort of noise. Victor squeezed his shoulders affectionately, rubbing at his arms, and John could smell his cologne; something subtle and probably expensive and a bit like freshly cut grass. “I’m liking your man,” he said to Sherlock, and John was trying to determine a polite way to indicate that he didn’t need to be _touched_ quite so thoroughly, when Victor pulled away completely and placed a hand on the small of Sherlock’s back. “Nevermind that. Take it with you, keep it; I admit, I rather hoped I could use it as a bargaining chip.”

“A bargaining chip?” John rasped, frowning.

“Not for your services, per se. Not the usual ones. I’ve perhaps invited you here under false pretences—though it really has been marvellous to see you again, Bee, and to meet you, John. It’s just that my company is throwing this silly charity do next week. It’s why I’m in London. It’s so tiresome, trying to find names for that sort of thing.”

“Names?” John sometimes longed for a conversation during which he wasn’t ever, not even once, totally out of his depth. It struck him once again how Victor was so much like Sherlock, and John wasn’t sure if that was to his credit or detriment, but he hated it either way.

“He means us,” Sherlock interrupted. “Famous people; people with names that he hopes will inspire others to pay a thousand pounds per plate for the opportunity to watch us eat.”

“And dance,” Victor agreed. “I admit, once I did a little digging, I found out what a loyal and, dare I say, _rabid_ fanbase you have here in London. The speculation as to your romantic status alone would sell out the place. And, seeing as you would be under no obligation to confirm or deny anything, I thought you might be persuaded into manipulating the public interest for a good cause.”

“The good cause presumably being your amended tax bill?” Sherlock asked as Victor slid his arm all the way around his waist. The look on Sherlock’s face could have curdled milk.

Victor shrugged. “Everything costs money. There are better and worse ways to spend it. This way happens to raise money for a paediatric oncology centre.”

“Kids with cancer,” John said, turning to Sherlock, “this charity thing is for _kids_ with _cancer_.”

“John, don’t be ridiculous, this charity thing is for Victor’s company.” Sherlock moved out of Victor’s reach and placed the bee book back on the shelf. “We won’t be doing it.”

“Sherlock…” John didn’t know what he meant to say. Victor was a lot on the side of too smooth, bordering on smarmy really, and John didn’t like at all the way he touched and looked at and spoke about Sherlock. To go and sham at being boyfriends for another evening in Victor’s company was out of the question; to turn down the request felt equally impossible. It didn’t exactly fall under the purview of the Hippocratic Oath, but it was a near thing, and John had recently developed a soft spot for anything to do with children, having accepted not all that long ago that he likely wouldn’t have any of his own. It wasn’t a conscious decision on his part; more of an unintended but grudgingly accepted consequence of living an exceptionally dangerous lifestyle with an absolutely reckless flatmate, a lifestyle that included body parts in the fridge and toxins on the kitchen worktop, and, John had finally come to realize, the complete inability to form any kind of lasting connection with a human being whose name wasn’t Sherlock Holmes. He found it bothered him less and less as time went on, as he rounded the bend past forty and especially since Sherlock’s return, but once in a while he still felt those cold little ghosts of the life he might have had, ghosts in the empty shapes of things like romance and sex and _children_ , floating around and within him, things he knew he couldn’t expect to ever happen now; and while that was mostly okay, it was also, just sometimes, a little bit not.

“That’s what you want, John? To spend a night in formal dress, making small talk with a group of people who are dull in the absolute _worst_ way, which only the extraordinarily wealthy can be, feeding the rumour mill about our _relationship_?” He emphasised the last word with such venom John thought he must be able to taste bile on his tongue, and John couldn’t help but feel mildly offended. “You would _hate_ it. _I_ would hate it. Why on earth would we do it?”

“I believe your handsome man here has just explained to you exactly why you should do it,” Victor intercepted with an indecent amount of charm. “Think of the children.”

Sherlock looked exasperatedly at John as though Victor were missing a giant purple panda sitting in the middle of the room. “We can’t,” he said, “we’ve got plans.”

Victor smiled patiently. “I haven’t mentioned which evening.”

“ _All_ of the evenings. Next week promises to be very busy. We’re completely booked up.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John said. Victor pulled the bee book back off the shelf and attempted to hand it over to Sherlock, who crossed his arms and tossed his head back like a stroppy but somehow still impossibly regal stallion. John sighed and moved to accept the book with passable grace. He turned to Victor. “Do you really think we could help with raising money?”

“I don’t doubt that if I were to announce you joining our VIP guest list, the tickets would sell out in minutes,” Victor said confidently, holding out his glass and clinking it against John’s. “But, think about it. Talk it over. It’s entirely between the two of you.”

“Too right,” Sherlock snapped, and glanced at a wristwatch he wasn’t wearing. “Would you look at the time—John, I do believe we ordered a taxi for ten o’clock and now it’s five minutes of.”

John rolled his eyes and turned to Victor apologetically. “He’s only lucked out that’s actually true.”

Victor smiled that disarming smile that he had, the one that showed the top row of his perfect white teeth, and took John’s elbow to lead him back down to the foyer. John supposed all this _touching_ must just be Victor’s way, perhaps something he’d picked up in his international travels; he’d had a hand on one or the other of them practically all night, though he suspected the tally was balanced largely in Sherlock’s favour. “Not to worry, John. I expect this is the perfect place to end what I hope you will agree was a positively splendid evening.”

Sherlock trailed behind them, still pouting, refusing once more when John attempted to hand him the book.

“It’s alright, Bee. You can take it either way. It’s yours.” Victor put both of his enormous hands on Sherlock’s biceps, practically encircling them with his finger span, forcing Sherlock to meet his gaze. “I mean that. But I do hope you’ll come. If for no other reason than because I’d like to see you; both of you.” Victor turned to John at that, and moved one hand to squeeze John’s arm as well. “I’ll just get your coats.”

Once Victor was reliably out of earshot, Sherlock turned to John. “John,” he hissed, “you can’t _seriously —_”

“We will discuss this at home.”

“Oh, _really_ , John, you—”

“At _home_ , Sherlock.”

“Sometimes you treat me like I’m an absolute _child_ , John, did you know that?” Sherlock sniffed. “You’re worse than Mycroft.”

John tried to ignore how much they sounded every bit the part of a bickering couple, and how oddly conflicted he felt, torn between the warring motivations of wanting to keep Sherlock as far away from Victor as possible, and of not wanting to let Sherlock get away with being a selfish bastard simply because he couldn’t be arsed to leave the sofa most evenings. At Victor’s return, John favoured him with what he hoped was a serene and winning smile as they shook hands, and tried not to flinch visibly when Victor pulled him into a one-armed embrace, grazing his cheek with a stubbly kiss. “I do hope I’ll see you again soon, John.”

“Ta,” John replied, “tonight was… well, it was very nice.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Victor embraced a reluctant Sherlock once more, kissing him twice on both cheeks, and saw them both out to the lift. “John, you have my card; I’ve put it in the pocket of your coat. Looking forward to hearing from you.”

Sherlock made a face that John only half hoped Victor missed as the lift doors slowly shut.

 

*

 

The taxi ride back to Baker Street was almost entirely silent. Sherlock was still in a massive strop, and, in the absence of Victor’s company, John had dropped back down into a lazy sated place that was mostly the job of good food and good wine and even better brandy. Clutching the book in his lap and resting his forehead against the cool glass of the window, he thought perhaps they’d discuss the charity event in the morning, or possibly never. Possibly he’d just hope Sherlock would forget the whole thing, and John could somehow convince him that going was part of a case; perhaps Lestrade could even be persuaded to get involved. He could invent some embezzlement scheme and make up a murder, get Sherlock done up in a tuxedo and maybe he wouldn’t notice where they were until they'd arrived.

John wasn’t even sure if it was truly just the nature of the charity that made him feel so strongly about attending. Of course it had more than a lot to do with it, but a small voice nagged at the back of John’s brain, reminding him of how utterly enjoyable he found it lately to force Sherlock to be uncomfortable, to make Sherlock do things he didn’t want to do, for John’s sake. Maybe it was a test, to prove that Sherlock had meant it when he’d said he was sorry for leaving; maybe it was just John’s version of retribution. He knew Sherlock had done everything in aid of his welfare, but that didn’t go all the way to subdue his anger over having suffered years of grief that were suddenly invalidated, suddenly supposed not to count, because Sherlock hadn’t really died, and so it followed naturally that John hadn’t really grieved. Only as far as John was concerned, he absolutely had, and it cut and bit at him that Sherlock didn’t seem to think so, or at least refused to openly acknowledge it; and sometimes it just felt good, felt _bloody fantastic_ , to lash out at Sherlock in any way he could, because Sherlock was there when he was supposed not to be, and that was an opportunity few people who mourned the dead were ever afforded.

He also couldn’t discount the strange sort of emotional discord he’d felt throughout the evening, pretending to be Sherlock’s boyfriend in front of a man who, if appearances were to be believed, had once held the role himself. It had never been overtly referenced, but John wasn’t a stupid man, and, though polite to a fault, Victor was hardly a subtle one. It left John feeling at once oddly protective and uncomfortably insufficient; the pretence had been more than wearing.

John pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb, and sighed. He was completely knackered, and tired of dissecting his motivations and anxieties. He’d made a bit of a mess, but he would put it away and examine it himself, later. They could discuss Victor’s invitation after, once he’d got his head back on straight.

Though truth be told, he was loath to let a particular one of the seemingly smaller sleeping dogs lie. Not bothering to hide his amusement he asked, “ _Bee_?”

“Shut up,” Sherlock growled, and curled away as far as he could against the door of the cab.

 

*

 

Sherlock left John to pay for the taxi this time, which was surely an intentional indication of his continued annoyance. John sighed, paid, and followed Sherlock into the flat. He hung up his coat, pulling Victor’s card from its pocket and slipping it into his wallet, as Sherlock was busying himself with some petri dish or another in the kitchen.

“You’re letting him get to you. You’re being taken in by his _charm_.” Sherlock’s voice was muffled due to his head being shoved half-inside the refrigerator, but the scorn was still razor-sharp.

“I know you’ll find this difficult to believe, but there’s nothing wrong with being charming, Sherlock. Especially when it earns large donations for sick kids.” John actually felt there rather was something off about the way Victor was charming, but the way the entire evening had played out compelled him to be contrary.

Sherlock, satisfied with whatever it was he had been prodding in the fridge, strode across the kitchen, past John and into the living room. “There are at least a dozen ways he could sell out that event that have not a single thing to do with us. We just happen to be the first he’s come across, and the easiest to manipulate. He’s just using us; _especially_ you. He knows a bleeding heart when he sees one.”

“That’s something I’m to be ashamed of then?” John moved toward Sherlock. “That’s something that’s wrong with me? That I want to help, that I care about people? That I’m _human_?”

Sherlock winced minutely, and then quickly recovered, adopting an impassive expression. John immediately drew back and clutched hard at his right elbow with his left hand. He hadn’t meant to say that; he’d meant never again to say anything like that.

“I—I’m sorry, Sherlock. I didn’t mean… I just think it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Yeah, we’d have to deal with Victor, but we can just tell him we’re not ready for the general public to know about us, and then we can act more or less like ourselves. It’s just a night of dinner and dancing. You don’t even have to dance. You don’t even have to _eat_.”

Sherlock shrugged before collapsing onto the sofa, stretching his legs down the length of it and draping one arm over his eyes like a Victorian in full swoon. “I can see that you have once again been blinded by your feeble notions of what constitutes morality, the inevitable result of which being, as always, that I suffer for it. Honestly, John, I’m disappointed.”

John’s eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. “We are going to this event. You are going to be charming and social and _behave_ yourself and and I’ll _not_ hear another word about it.” He’d intended to leave it for the night, to ignore how unsettled the evening had made him, but Sherlock just kept _pushing_ , kept being so obnoxiously _Sherlock_ that John found himself unable to stop the vitriol from spewing. “You are going to do something helpful and unselfish for reasons other than because you’re _bored_ for once in your _bloody_ life, do you understand me?” He crossed his arms in front of his chest and drew himself up to his most menacing stance, the one that had unfailingly cowed soldiers three times his size.

Sherlock’s eyebrows shot up at John’s tone, which was admittedly sharper than was warranted. “Yes, all right, if it means that much to you. We’ll go participate this hideous charade and make a mockery of charity itself. It’s absolutely ludicrous, it’s an awful idea and it will end horribly, but it’s _your_ idea, so that’s hardly a surprise. Good, fine. Is that all?”

It wasn’t all. John couldn’t even begin to explain how much it wasn’t, so he just kept standing and seething.

Sherlock lifted his arm, peering at John. “There’s more, then, yes?  All right, out with it.”

John sucked in a breath and attempted to calm himself. He was angry, viciously angry, and he knew it was unreasonable, that it was all stemming from something else, something he couldn’t quite name but he suspected had been worried at and bitten into by all of Victor’s shiny white teeth. But he knew that being angry with Sherlock was like being angry with a rogue kitchen appliance; yelling accomplished nothing, and it was unwise to stick a fork directly into the source of the issue. The best he could do was hypothesise, then fiddle gently with nonessential parts to see what he could pry loose.

 _Right then_ , John thought to himself, _hypothesis_. Unless he was looking for something in return, Sherlock didn’t take cases from Mycroft because they’d be favours to Mycroft, not because he was inherently anti-public spirited. So long as Sherlock didn’t hold any hidden grudges, when left to his own devices, he was more or less morally indifferent to the tasks set before him. He judged everything on a scale of Boring to Not-Boring to Triple-Homicide-in-a-Locked-Room; if something rated as boring, he wouldn’t do it, or if John made him do it, he’d complain half-heartedly and pretend that John had nothing to do with his reasoning for doing so, but he’d do it all the same. It stood to reason, then, as far as John could see, that whatever was bothering Sherlock had everything to do with Victor Trevor.

He wasn’t sure why, but the thought made his gut roil and his shoulders tense.

John shifted his voice back into neutral gear. “He snuck treats in and called you pet names. Sounds like you were more than acquaintances.”

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow, but didn’t respond.

John uncrossed his arms and rested his hands just inside his pockets. He began to tap his foot against the floor, anxiously searching for the words that might coax something, anything from Sherlock. He lifted his tone even lighter and tried again. “You know when I was in school, anyone who bought me a beer and called me Johnny was m’best mate.”

“Yes, John, you are remarkably easy to win over and your tastes are astonishingly simple. You could spend all night telling me things I already know, and lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time, or you could go ahead and ask me whatever it is that has your knickers in a twist.”

“You are being deliberately obtuse.”

Sherlock sighed, maneuvering his limbs into a seated position facing John, and placed his forehead against his open palms, elbows propped up on his knees. “Believe me, I would like nothing more than to end this conversation, by whatever means happen to be within my power to do so. Unfortunately, those means do not at present include telepathy. Thus, it appears we are at an impasse; are you going to say whatever it is you need to say, or are you going to just stand over me all night stomping it out morse code? For god’s sake, what _is_ it, John?” He shook his hands then, fiercely, grabbing at his hair, yanking his face up to meet John’s eyes.

John swallowed. “I just would like to know,” he started, paused, and then scrubbed one hand over his face. “I just think it would be better, for when we’re around _him_ anyway, if you told me.”

“Told you _what_?”

John looked away.

Comprehension dawned on Sherlock’s face in the form of an unsubtle grimace. “You want to know if… with _Victor_.” Sherlock chuckled quietly, coldly. “Oh, _John_. Idle curiosity about the status of my long-fabled virginity, or are you simply anxious to ascertain precisely how jealous you’ll need to pretend to be in front of him as we continue our little farce?”

John threw up his hands and blew out a frustrated breath. “You know what, you don’t have to be such a _complete_ dick about absolutely _everything_! I’m only your friend. I’m only trying to help. I only did that for _you_ , to help _you_.”

Sherlock shifted and wrapped his arms around himself, regarding John coolly. “I don’t recall asking for your _help_.”

“No, of course you didn’t _ask_ , you’d never ask. You just stood there in Angelo’s looking at Victor with your big, sad eyes all bugged out of your head, but no, you didn’t want any _help_. The great Sherlock Holmes would _never_ lower himself to accept _help_ from anybody, least of all his best friend, his flatmate, his partner, the man who watched him jump off a _bloody —_” John cut himself off with a sharp inhalation, tried to dial himself back, but he couldn’t seem to get a hold of it. “Sod this. Sod it. Sod you, sod the whole damn thing. Just, do whatever you want, Sherlock, I don’t care. I’m finished.” He turned, heading for the stairs.

“John—”

“Leave it, Sherlock. Just leave it. You win, okay? You got your way, you win, we won’t go, we won’t do anything you don’t want to do anymore, just so long as we stop talking right now, all right?” He glanced over his shoulder briefly. Sherlock was still seated on the couch, forearms hanging limp between his knees, an inscrutable expression on his face. He nodded.

John shook his head a little, as if ridding himself of something stuck in his hair, and then went up to his bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him.

 

*

 

John felt himself being pulled from sleep slowly, and then a bit faster, as though he were being yanked out of it like an anchor stuck in wet sand. There was a sound, at first low, that had grown stronger and quicker, enough to disrupt his thankfully dreamless slumber. It was still dark enough for John to know that it was too early to be awake, and he rolled over onto his stomach and stuffed his head under a pillow with a low growl, thinking that of all the nights Sherlock could give his louder experiments a miss, this one wouldn’t have been the worst choice; high functioning sociopath, indeed.

Only the sound wasn’t coming from downstairs. It was a rapping noise, a sort of soft-against-hard slap-thump that kept getting both more audible and insistent, and then, “John? _John_.”

“Sherlock?”

The door creaked open wide enough for Sherlock to hover half-inside, which wasn’t very much at all; _lanky git_ , John thought. He had changed into his blue dressing gown, grey tee-shirt, and striped pyjamas, and was standing barefoot in the doorway like a child who’d had a bad dream. It irritated John that he found the sight endearing.

Sherlock fidgeted awkwardly with the belt on his dressing gown. “Did I wake you?” His voice was low, soothing, uncertain.

“You know you did.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“May I come in?”

John sighed. He sat all the way up and rubbed at his face a little. “What do you want, Sherlock?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, just twisted the belt around his hands some more and shifted his weight on his ridiculous bare feet.

“Fine, I give up, just come in then.” John shoved over a bit to give Sherlock room to perch on the edge of his bed.

Sherlock, for his part, was considerate enough not to switch on the overhead light, but rather opened John’s bedroom door wide to allow the light from the hall to filter in enough to bathe the room in a muted half-glow. To John, everything was greyscale and a little surreal as Sherlock hesitantly approached John’s bed and sat only on the very edge of it, gingerly, turning to face John and stiffly folding his hands in his lap.

“Thank you,” he said primly.

“What’s this about, Sherlock? It’s late. Or early; I’m really not sure, but you’ve woken me up at any rate, so it had better be good.”

“I,” Sherlock started, and then paused. He took a breath that sounded shaky, and John leaned toward him, putting a hand on his arm.

“Sherlock, are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” He twisted his fingers together against his thighs. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right; go on.”

“No, John. _That’s_ what I’ve come to say. I’m _sorry_. I’m apologising. For the way I acted tonight, the way I’ve treated you. You were right. I was being —selfish.” Sherlock’s voice caught hard on that last word, and he pulled his legs up beneath him, crawling further onto John’s bed, curling himself around John’s frame as close as he could without touching him. “I don’t want you to—it’s not finished. We’ll go. To Victor’s party, that is. I’ll go. It’s what you want, and that’s what we’ll do.”

“Sherlock—”

“We weren’t—which is not to say that he didn’t want us to be. I suspected, of course. Well, I _knew_ ; but I was young, naive, and uninterested in such things. Though we were always—well, we were a pair. A matched set, perhaps, but viciously competitive. Victor was always more social, but he disliked that I still _noticed_ more about people. We would try to outdo one another, deducing or extracting the intricacies of our mutual acquaintances’ lives. We would… well, we would bet on it; with money, or favours, or other—commodities.” He paused. “It grew… untenable. Until there was an incident, involving his father and the family business. Victor Senior’s health was poor, and Victor needed answers before it was too late, so he asked me to investigate.” Sherlock paused, swallowed hard. “I—I looked into the matter. Discovered some things Victor might have rather I didn’t. Everything sort of… changed then. He had to leave, pursue business ventures abroad.” He looked down and moved a hand to rub absentmindedly over John’s duvet, unintentionally brushing against John’s leg. “But it was a _case_ John, my first _real_ case. I solved it regardless, and that changed everything for me. It changed everything for Victor, too, but I can’t say I’m sorry for it.” He raised his eyes to John’s then, and John could just make them out in the dim light, pale silver and fraught with worry. Sherlock let out a soft, sad huff of breath. “I don’t imagine Victor’s all that sorry about it either.”

“And the book? The whole _Bee_ thing?” John felt as though he were still half-asleep, hovering in a dreamlike in-between space with Sherlock, a place where it had suddenly become normal for Sherlock to make grand confessions, where it was okay for him to listen, to ask questions, to demand things, and he didn’t know how long they’d stay in it, curled on his bed, hardly a handful of centimetres separating them.

“Of all the ridiculous pet names. It was inappropriate enough at eighteen.” Sherlock shifted so that he was half-lying on the bed, propped up on an elbow, and John felt an inexplicable urge to move and mirror his pose, as if the words would stop flowing if there was too much space between their mouths. “He found the book via a dealer shortly before—before. It was to be a birthday gift; or maybe something to use as collateral, one never knew with Victor. We saw each other for the last time the night before he left. He tried to leave it with me before he went abroad, but I wouldn’t take it. I didn’t want it. I still don’t. It’s not a time I like to remember, John.”

“Sherlock,” John said gently, “maybe he’s kept it all these years for a reason? Things are just so… intense when you’re young. Maybe he wants to make amends. Maybe this is his way of asking if…” John trailed off, unsure of how to say the rest of it, or why the words felt so heavy on his tongue. A ridiculous notion, him, jealous over Victor Trevor; and for what? For being handsome and charming and attracted to Sherlock? For knowing Sherlock sooner, or longer? Surely not better.

“Asking if what?”

“Well, asking if _anything_ , I suppose. It seems like he misses you.”

“John, don’t be absurd.”

“I’m not.”

“You absolutely are.”

“Look at that, you’ve managed a whole six minutes between apologising for calling me stupid and calling me stupid again.”

Sherlock had enough grace to look chagrined. “It’s a ridiculous notion. He just wants me to do a favour for him, again, though it’s not a terribly sensible thing for him to want, seeing how poorly the last favour I did for him seemed to go.”

“That’s rather my point, Sherlock.” John sighed and rolled back, putting his arms behind his head, trying to ignore the little flames of possessive anger licking up his spine. He turned his face to Sherlock’s. “The heart’s a funny thing. It doesn’t work like the head. It willingly, unerringly puts itself in the path of certain disaster in order to get at what it wants. Even if it’s hopeless; _especially_ if it’s hopeless.”

Sherlock paused at that. “And you… you think Victor _wants_ me? _That’s_ why he’s doing all this?”

John shrugged. “It’s the way he looks at you. Like you’re some sort of rare and wild thing he can’t believe he’s come across. Like you’re something even all his money can’t get him. That, and he’s always touching you.”

“He was always touching _you_ as well.”

“Diversion tactic. He thinks I’m your boyfriend.”

Sherlock flinched. He didn’t reply, just got a sort of otherworldly look about him, and his eyes glazed over as he turned his body to lie back on John’s bed, commandeering John’s extra pillow and raising his steepled hands to his lips.

“About that,” John said, after a beat. “If you wanted to, you know, split up with me—tell him that you’ve split up with me—because you’re interested...” he paused as his stomach did a funny twist that was not just a little like agony. He tried to breathe through it. “Not that I need to even tell you this of course, but you should—if you want to. Maybe it would be different this time.”

For a long moment, Sherlock didn’t say anything.

Then, just as John felt his eyelids start to droop, Sherlock’s voice wafted through his rapidly retreating consciousness.

“You’re not stupid, John,” he said softly. “You are recklessly sentimental; but you are not stupid.”

“Ta,” John replied, which turned into a yawn, and then all at once, he fell asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing John noticed when he awoke was that his bed was really very warm. He was cocooned in blankets, which wasn’t unusual, but there was heat radiating from a source behind him all along his back. He made to roll over, still bleary and confused with the last vestiges of a vaguely pleasant dream clinging stubbornly to his psyche, until he abruptly found himself nose-to-nose and knee-to-knee with a bedful of consulting detective.

 _Snoring_ consulting detective.

It wasn’t a full-bellied, groaning sort of snore. It was all soft huffs of breath that rattled slightly on the inhale, ghosting over John’s face, hot and only slightly sour with sleep. Sherlock’s lips were parted, his tongue peeking pink and wet between them, and it was something that John hadn’t realised before, but he supposed Sherlock’s waking visage must always be in a process of hiding, betraying, or deliberately implying some emotion or another; because the way Sherlock’s face looked then, that was an expression John had never seen on it, open and slack and calmly ethereal.

John was struck, without warning, by how very much he wanted to touch that face. He felt half-drugged by how badly wanted to drag his fingertips over the carved-marble cheekbones and rub the pad of his thumb against that exhorbitantly plush lower lip and cup Sherlock’s long and graceful jaw in both his hands, press his lips to Sherlock’s near-translucent eyelids, and kiss them before they opened.

He reached out a hand and let it hover just over the far side of Sherlock’s face, as if to cup his cheek, and felt Sherlock’s damp breath against the inside of his wrist. Maybe, if he were gentle, he reasoned, he could just stroke that soft-looking bit of skin between Sherlock’s ear and mouth, only a little. Maybe he could rest his mouth ever so lightly against the curve of Sherlock’s forehead, and if he were careful enough, Sherlock wouldn’t stir, wouldn’t even feel it, would never know it had happened.

It was at that precise moment that John’s mobile, plugged into its charger and sitting on the nightstand that was to Sherlock’s immediate right, began blaring an excessive combination of bells and chimes, specifically designed to rouse John from even the most comatose slumber should the clinic, or more likely Sherlock, need him.

Sherlock jolted awake and instantly upright, smashing his open-mouthed face so hard against the exposed underside of John’s hand that they both recoiled as if burned, John shouting a colourful array of expletives that was all but drowned out by Sherlock’s abruptly pained howl.

“ _Bloody_ hell!” John yelped, “did you just _bite_ me?”

Sherlock glared at John above the fingers he held pressed against his nose, testing it for tenderness, spot-checking for blood. “Oh, _I’m_ sorry, did it hurt your _hand_ when you punched me in the _face_ just now?” His haughty tone was somewhat mitigated by its nasality.

“I didn’t—nevermind, it’s _my_ bed. What are you even still doing here?”

Sherlock, satisfied that his face remained intact, sat up again and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Must have lost track of where I was and fallen asleep when you did, or shortly thereafter. Very unlike me; won’t happen again. Though I’m not sure it warrants beating me awake with your fists.”

“It was an open hand, Sherlock. I was—” John cut himself off and clamoured for an appropriate substitute for what he _had_ been doing. He eyed his nightstand. “I was after my phone. That was my text alert.”

“ _That’s_ your text alert?” Sherlock sniffed. “And you thought Irene Adler was unsubtle.”

John made a face at Sherlock before reaching over his chest to retrieve the offending object.

“Huh,” he said, bemused. “It’s from Victor.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “So, rather than do as he winningly insisted and await your decision regarding his request with a modicum of patience, he’s decided instead to harass you directly?”

“He’s just making sure I have the correct date and time; look, he didn’t even ask.” John held out the phone.

Sherlock examined it sceptically. “How enterprising of him to have taken it upon himself to acquire your mobile number.”

“I’ve put it on the website.”

“A stupid thing to do.”

“Yours is on _your_ website.”

“Ah,” Sherlock said, throwing his legs over the side of the bed and standing up as gracefully as one could with fairly alarming bedhead, “but, as you never fail to remind me, nobody’s reading _my_ website.”

“ _Victor_ is,” John rejoined.

Sherlock paused in the midst of his dramatic exit, his shoulders framed by John’s bedroom doorway. “Yes. How interesting that he’s texting _you_ ,” he sneered, and swept out of the room and down the stairs with aggravatingly long strides.

“Because he knows I’ll reply,” John called after Sherlock, but Sherlock was already mostly out of earshot.

He sat back in bed and tried to dismiss the uneasy feeling in his gut. John wasn’t an idiot, and he knew the real reason Victor had chosen to contact him first; he could tell Victor wouldn’t be the type to do anything so crass as try and outright pursue Sherlock behind John’s back. Communicating with John was a subtler move, a move that would maintain the air of harmless friendship, the vehicle of subterfuge he seemed intent on using in order to get closer to Sherlock. Even though John realistically should have no real stake in the matter, there was something in that knowledge that gnawed at him. Maybe it was that, fake or not, John was meant to be Sherlock’s boyfriend, and he had an ingrained raised-hackles reaction to someone attempting to infringe upon his supposed territory. Maybe it was that, no matter what, Sherlock always seemed to be John’s business, and John didn’t like the idea of someone actively trying to influence Sherlock into doing something that should, at least to Victor, qualify as inexorably wrong. Decent people did not utilise their ex-boyfriend’s current boyfriend as an aide and abettor in his own throw-over.

 _Then what was all that, this morning_? A stubborn voice demanded from inside his head. _If it’s all fake, if it’s all just about moral code, then why were you so desperate to touch him? To_ kiss _him_?

Possible answers to those questions brought John into emotional territory that he had mainly been avoiding since Sherlock’s return. What had been simple in one way before Sherlock’s death, and seemed in another way simpler still in light of it, had all become blurred and muddled in his head and his chest and his throat, and trying to parse out what all of it meant now that everything was supposed to be normal again—amusing as it was to consider anything involving Sherlock Holmes to be _normal —_had proven exhausting. So John had done what John did best, which was to fold up all of those feelings like so many old woollen sweaters, pack them tightly away into a stronghold inside of him, and hope that they might stay benign and dormant until they eventually disappeared altogether.

He loved Sherlock. John could admit that freely; he loved Sherlock the way he loved adrenaline and danger, with a full-bodied, unselfconscious love that radiated out from his insides like electricity when he was in the midst of it, when Sherlock was taking up all of his energy and his focus, immersing each of his senses, dazzling him by rattling off deductions rapid-fire or leading him unfailingly and at full-speed around corners, over rooftops, down stairwells as bullets whizzed narrowly by them. When all that had been taken from him, when he’d watched Sherlock die in front of him and been led to believe with such excruciating and unmistakable certainty that he had lost both the source and object of so much _love_ , John began to grieve not only what he’d had, but what he’d so quickly and so often rejected. He’d begun to wonder if he really might have been _in_ love with Sherlock, only he was too stubborn and possibly afraid to admit it, even to himself. He’d begun to wonder if maybe, had he been a bit more aware, a bit more brave and kind, if he had _told_ Sherlock, maybe Sherlock wouldn’t have left him, wouldn’t have let _him_ leave, because the one thing John had been sure of was that Sherlock had died feeling very much alone.

Only Sherlock came back, and that well-nigh shattered John all over again, demolishing every scrap of sense he’d been able to make out of the whole damn thing. Worse than that, Sherlock had barely acknowledged any of it, just delivered the details clinically and matter-of-factly, and then proceeded to resume life per usual in 221B. The enormity and the emptiness of it left John flat on his arse with the wind knocked out of him, and lately he felt himself more often than not wavering between confused and remorseful longing for Sherlock, and absolute and utter fury at him. He frequently caught his hands flexing irritably at times when he was unsure as to whether he’d rather grab Sherlock by the collar to throttle him or snog him; so in the place of giving into either impulse, he just tucked it all neatly away inside and ignored it.

It seemed, however, that something about Victor Trevor was bringing everything to the surface; the anger and the guilt and the way John’s chest felt unaccountably tight when Sherlock looked especially vulnerable. He knew he was breaking. What he didn’t know was what to do about it.

John propped his elbows on his bent knees, pushed his face into his hands and let out a long groan. He felt incredibly tired then, nothing at all like getting out of bed, venturing out of his room and downstairs to face the day, to face Sherlock. He looked at his phone, abandoned on the bed next to him.

Well, that was one thing he knew. His jealousy and resentment didn’t belong to anybody but himself. Whatever was going on between him and Sherlock, or between Sherlock and Victor, it wasn’t the fault of the children’s charity. They’d work everything else out, or maybe they wouldn’t, but he’d be damned if he was going to go through all of this without having made at least one respectable decision.

 _We’ll be there_ , he typed out with plodding thumbs, and hit SEND.

 

*

 

It had been a very strange day.

John had resigned himself to getting out of bed and getting on with his life like the pragmatic sort that he was, and he’d showered and dressed and joined Sherlock in the kitchen for breakfast as if nothing were amiss. Well, John had eaten breakfast; Sherlock had hovered over the previous night’s petri dishes with a troubled expression, using little glass pipettes and slides to extract and study various things under his microscope, never once speaking to John nor acknowledging John’s presence in the flat. That behaviour might have been commonplace before, but since he’d moved back in, if Sherlock had done anything at all to recognise everything that had happened, it was to _notice_ John more, even mid-sulk, and treat him ever so slightly less like a piece of furniture or just a handy replacement for the skull. That morning, he’d become suddenly disinclined to even _look_ at John. Things had only got worse from there.

It was the quiet sort of midweek day when neither of them had anything on, and usually they were content on such days to mutually exist in companionable silence that was punctuated by affectionate gestures, like the delivery of a hot cuppa from across the room or a jaunty little violin serenade, offered from one of them at just the moment the other craved it; but neither tea nor music had been shared, nor had Sherlock even so much as glanced once in his direction, and it was gone eight in the evening, and John was beginning to worry that they were in the middle of a row he hadn’t been aware they’d started.

It was drizzling outside and cosy inside, and it all could have been perfect except that Sherlock seemed to be in the midst of a particularly insidious maelstrom of _thinking_. That, coupled with John’s growing unease at his own conflicted musings from earlier in the morning, poked sharply at John’s nerves and made everything feel as though it were buzzing with an unpleasant layer of static.

Despite his concern over the underlying cause, John couldn’t help but take advantage of Sherlock’s apparent need for distance by appropriating the sofa, a spot that was normally completely covered in the dramatically draped limbs of his flatmate. Sherlock was sitting in his leather armchair, but with his rear on the backrest and his bare feet flat on the seat, hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees and hands steepled in front of his mouth. He hadn’t moved or made a sound in well over an hour.

John flipped to a different section of the newspaper, rattling the pages and faintly sighing, when Sherlock perked his head up, looked sharply over at him, and bounded off the chair, onto the sofa, and into John’s personal space in one fluid, predatory movement, like a cat who’d just spotted a spider.

“Sherlock, what are you—”

“I lied earlier, John,” Sherlock said, still crowding him, pushing down the pages of the newspaper until John relented and allowed him to toss them aside altogether. “I didn’t fall asleep shortly after you did. I didn’t lose track of where I was. I watched you for hours after you fell asleep.”

“Hours?” John said weakly.

“It helped me to think. I thought about what you said, about how a person can hold onto something for years, never knowing, but always hoping that he might be able to find it again—his opportunity. How it might be different, if he does.” Sherlock paused, looked down at John’s mouth and then up again. “It made me realise that if what you say is true, that’s what I want.”

John shifted awkwardly, trying to ignore the way his heart had settled somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach. He felt pinned by Sherlock, who had placed a knee between John’s legs and then bracketed his arms around them. “Well,” he began, “then that’s great. You can just tell Victor that—”

“Not with Victor, don’t be daft,” Sherlock adopted the expression he reserved exclusively for when he was convinced that John was being deliberately moronic. He moved impossibly closer, pressing a hand against the back of the sofa next to John’s head and said, “I want it with _you_.”

“With _me_?” John tried to scramble backward, but was trapped between the sofa and Sherlock. “What do you mean, with me? We’ve never… surely you haven’t…”

“I haven’t what, John? Don’t tell me you haven’t considered this, haven’t _been_ considering this. Don’t act like this is some kind of shock. Just last night I conceded to you your passable intelligence; don’t make me contradict myself.”

John wasn’t sure he’d ever felt so wrong-footed in his life. Sherlock was just looming over him, enormous and gorgeous and terrifying and inches away, saying things that didn’t make sense; only Sherlock _always_ made sense. It was everybody else who didn’t make sense, it was _John_ who didn’t make sense. John felt a dizzying sort of prickling sensation across his cheeks and inside his ears as he struggled to get enough air in his lungs. It was one thing for John to suffer silently for months, muddled by rage and longing, turning over scenarios in his mind that could never happen, that he would never expect to face; that he could handle, barely. But for Sherlock to come at him like that, surrounding and overwhelming him, telling him that it was a thing _Sherlock_ wanted, that it was a thing he had taken under advisement and brought on a tour through his mind palace and had decided, for the both of them, that it was a thing that _should happen_ , when John wasn’t even able to figure out what the thing even _was_ in the first place—

He pushed Sherlock back and all but fled from the sofa, barrelling toward the stairs.

“John? John! Where are you going?” Sherlock was standing now, eyes wide and confused and, though John wouldn’t have thought it possible, maybe even a little frightened.

“I don’t know. Out.” John shrugged on his coat. “I need some air.”

“John.” Sherlock’s voice cut through his rapidly spiraling thoughts. He was steadier now, his face recomposed, holding out one hand as if to gentle him, as if John were a wild animal that had been spooked. John backed away from him still further, thinking that maybe he _was_ ; his whole body was tense, his skin felt tight and itchy, and he couldn’t think of anything except that he needed to get out, he needed to leave. Sherlock observed him, narrowing his eyes, pulling back his hand, straightening his shoulders. “I can’t have miscalculated this. Do you understand? I have done _nothing_ all day but _think_ about _this_. I am _not wrong about_ _this_.”

Looking down, John shook his head. “Don’t wait up,” he said, his voice tight and curt; and then, he left.

 

*

 

When John returned to 221B, it was well after midnight. There was a light in the living room window and a tall, lanky silhouette bobbing and swaying, drawing bow across instrument. He’d halfway hoped Sherlock would listen to him for once and be in bed when he got back, but this was Sherlock, and if there was one thing Sherlock did less often than sleep, it was follow orders. Sherlock could stay awake for years, John supposed, through sheer force of his absurdly stubborn will.

He heaved a sigh and trudged up the stairs. As he reached the top step, the piece Sherlock was playing ended, and John thought again about how impossibly, infuriatingly _brilliant_ this man was, and how completely and utterly _annoying_ it was to have his every move predicted like that, down to the first step he took inside his own flat.

“Knew exactly when I’d come back, then?” He asked as he hung up his coat.

“I ventured an educated guess.” Sherlock placed his violin and bow on the desk next to him. He turned to face John, but didn’t move closer.

“I realise you might not enjoy sleeping, Sherlock, but I do. I’m going to bed.”

Sherlock made a move as if to stop him, but instead stopped himself, seemed to recalibrate something. “I don’t think I’ll be able to, actually,” he said carefully.

John huffed out a laugh that held no mirth. “D’you know, me either? But I can’t deal with all _this_ ,” he gestured vaguely at the space between them, “right now.”

“You keep saying that, John. Not _now_ , not _tonight_. When, John? When can you deal with _this_? Why is it that I’ve become something you have to _deal_ with, something you don’t _want_ to deal with? What is it that I’ve done to make you so tired of me?” Sherlock’s tone was heavy with frustration, as if, of all the mysteries of the world that he could solve at a single glance, John Watson was the one that baffled him.

“Sherlock.” John exhaled hard, put his head in his hands and rubbed them firm against his face as he replied, “you can’t _really_ be asking me that. You can’t _actually_ be so thick as to not know.”

Sherlock’s face was blank in the hesitant way he had of expressing at once that he did not know, and that he did not want to be thought of as stupid for not knowing. John sighed.

“Sherlock…” he paused. He was just so exhausted from hiding it, from fighting against it; it would never be the right time to say it, but John was so _tired_ , and it felt like everything was falling apart around him and on top of him, like the truth was being crushed out of him without his consent. “Before you died, I spent the better part of two years trying to convince everybody in the world, anybody who would listen, that I was not in love with Sherlock Holmes. It became a thing I did automatically, routinely; I never stopped to think about it. And then you died, and you were gone, and I missed you so much I felt like my heart was bleeding out all over my insides and I thought to myself that maybe I _was_ in love with Sherlock Holmes, only I’d been too scared and stupid to recognise it, and it didn’t matter anyway because you were gone but _god_ , if I could have you back for long enough to tell you I loved you, I would.”

“John…” Sherlock’s mouth was twisted into a shape John had never seen, and his eyes were bright. John couldn’t let him talk, not yet, not then, or he’d never get through it.

“Then you came back,” he cut in quickly, before Sherlock could continue. “You came back, and it was a miracle, it was a horrible, awful sort of miracle, because I was so _angry_ at you, Sherlock. I’ve never been so angry about anything in my life, and I’ve been to _war_. And you, you acted like nothing had even happened; you were back and you were exactly yourself and took up acting exactly as you always did. You showed up one day and moved right back in. You told me why you did it, and you did it to save my life, so I couldn’t be angry about that, I wasn’t allowed to, it wouldn’t be proper to get angry about that. So I never said it, I just let you come back and be _you_ all over the place, but there was collateral damage. Those feelings I had about you, I thought I might have had,” John swallowed. “Well, they just got eaten up by all that. I can’t feel so many things at once about a person; it’s not healthy. Something had to give.”

“You… so you. That thing you said, just now.” Sherlock looked small and fragile and it would have broken John’s heart if he were able to let it. “You don’t, anymore? You can’t?”

“I don’t know, Sherlock,” John said honestly. “I don’t—just, not right now. You wanted to know why, and I’ve told you. For the sake of getting through it at all, getting through tonight and tomorrow and the next day and the party and basically the rest of our lives, _that_ is why I cannot do _this_ right _now_.”

“But you said,” Sherlock sounded vaguely panicked and he must have realised it, because he stopped and cleared his throat briefly before continuing. “You said that the heart _unerringly puts itself in the path of certain disaster in order to get at what it wants._ ”

John smiled sadly. “That’s true. It does; it _did_. But some things are just bigger than that. Some things are big enough to stop the heart from wanting.”

Sherlock took a full step back, pulling up his shoulders and lifting his chin. He looked down at John. “I see,” he replied. Here was the part of Sherlock that John marvelled at, that John couldn’t understand no matter how long or well he knew him. It was almost as if the entire conversation, the entire _evening_ hadn’t happened; he was once again remote, formal, closed-off and cold.

Sherlock turned then, fully away from John, effectively dismissing him. He took up his violin, and resolutely facing the window, he began to play.


	4. Chapter 4

The air inside 221B was thicker than it had ever been, even just after Sherlock came back, when John could barely look at him without wanting to grab him and shake him with the conflicted urge to at once ensure his continued existence, and to punish him for it. When it came to Sherlock, John was used to extremes: quiet and intense mid-case bouts of thinking; clanging, raucous, full-bodied frustration during the lulls between; inconsolable sulking at the failure of his tantrums to magically produce a distraction.

John could deal with silence, with strops and fits; what John was wholly unprepared for was _politeness_.

They’d spent the ensuing three days in an unbearable purgatory of guilt and civility, all _please_ s and _thank you_ s and _would-you-like_ s and _if-you-wouldn’t-mind_ s. It was almost as if Sherlock had deleted the entire event, except that he was just so goddamned _polite_ ; it cut at John worse than the screaming or the sulking would have done, and threw him entirely off-balance. Whether or not he’d have desired to address the awkwardness, he suddenly found himself unable, as Sherlock never offered any opening. He seemed to be orchestrating a complex dance between them, waltzing in and out and around the flat in perfect prediction of John’s movements, never once allowing a pregnant pause or half-second of silence before taking up the dance again, making it impossible for John to interject.

Even if he could, John wasn’t entirely sure what he was meant to say. _Hey Sherlock, did you delete the time you told me that you were in love with me, and if not, would you like to_? _I’m sorry that I don’t know if I can be in love with you back, but look, I’ve made you tea_? _Say, Sherlock, if you would quit being nice to me and go back to be being an enormous wanker, I’d be much obliged_? Nothing seemed to even approach the neighbourhood of appropriate, and Sherlock wouldn’t stand still in John’s presence long enough for him to work out what would, anyway.

He found that after all the fighting, after the dam had finally broken and everything he’d held so desperately inside had come pouring out of him, he was left with not much more than a sore and hollow feeling in the vicinity of his chest. He was still angry, there was still so much there to be angry about, but it was a bitter, cold sort of anger that threatened to be eclipsed by his overwhelming sadness. He knew that, long before Victor Trevor had come around, they’d both been ignoring everything that was wrong between them. Now all John could say for sure was that they’d both managed to utterly cock it up, and Sherlock didn’t seem willing to move past it and John certainly didn’t know how, and so there wasn’t much else to be done but allow the oppressive civility to continue.

The whole act was exhausting, and when the evening of Victor’s party arrived, John was contemplating begging off sick rather than spend an evening pretending not only that everything was all right, but also, irony of ironies, that he and Sherlock were together. The prospect bit at him sharply, and he doubted they’d even be able to manage it with anything like conviction.

Not to mention, he hadn’t the faintest idea as to what one wore to these sorts of things, and in all the confusion of the week, hadn’t thought to ask.

John trudged up the stairs of 221B after his day shift at the clinic, trying to formulate the best plan of escape. He meant to tell Sherlock directly, only Sherlock was in his bedroom with the door closed, and with things as they were, John was hesitant to seek him out in an unshared space in the flat. So, he made his way upstairs to his own bedroom, unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt as he went.

He didn’t see it straight away, only because he was stripping to his vest and tossing his shirt into the clothes hamper, but when he turned back around he noticed the garment bag on his bed.

The very posh-looking garment bag bearing a discreet logo from a very High Street sort of shop.

He approached it with an amount of trepidation that might be warranted by a possible explosive.

John sat on his bed and ran his fingers over the logo before pulling at the zip. He parted the sides of the bag and his breath caught a little as his palms caressed what was surely radically expensive textured wool in a soft silvery grey. He pulled the garment bag the rest of the way apart and then off, revealing a suit complete with a sateen dress shirt in a perfect pale lilac and a complimentary pocket silk already folded and tucked into the jacket. The tag had been conspicuously removed, but the label was just a small swatch of hand-sewn fabric with monogrammed initials that John didn’t recognise, and he didn’t even want to begin to contemplate how much it must have cost. As he moved the suit away from the bag, a small piece of paper fluttered down and onto the floor. He leaned to retrieve it.

 _I took the liberty of acquiring your measurements._  
_Don’t wear a tie._  
_SH_

John stroked one hand down the fine sleeve of the suit. It was a small fortune in luxury fabric that likely outstripped his monthly rent, and it was beautiful and thoughtful and exactly the kind of thing he’d never have expected Sherlock to think to do, and he couldn’t possibly accept it.

He rose from the bed with the suit in hand, making for the door with the single-minded purpose of finding Sherlock and talking him down from whatever flight of fancy had inspired all this, when the clattering jangle of his text alert gave him pause. He pulled his mobile from his trouser pocket.

 _I realise I’m terribly late in mentioning, but it’s_  
_just cocktail attire. I’m sure you’ll both have_  
_something suitable. If you don’t know, ask Sherlock._  
_He’ll sort you right out._

 _Of course_ , John thought, _Victor_. He couldn’t really blame Sherlock for wanting to go to the party now, for wanting to ensure that John would still go. Everything was falling apart between them, and John could feel the cracks and fissures of their shoddily-repaired relationship reopening, pieces crumbling off and down irretrievably into the abyss that had formed the moment that Sherlock had opened himself up, had offered everything he could to John and John had shaken his head, had turned away and refused to take it.

The suit, then, that was less of a peaceful overture and more of a request, John surmised. A request to go to the party, to act the part, to let Victor cut in on the dance floor or take Sherlock on a tour of the hotel that was hosting the event, to do the proper thing and step aside to let Sherlock seek out whatever it was he needed that John couldn’t provide. He had taken it for granted that Sherlock disliked people, that he didn’t do _relationships_ , that Sherlock didn’t need more than him, more than what they already were, to be satisfied. Maybe that was true once; it occurred to John that he'd been pretending that nothing had changed since Sherlock’s return as much as Sherlock himself had, but surely it must have done. He found that he’d only rather selfishly thought about how much things had changed for _him_ , how differently _he_ felt about their friendship in the wake of Sherlock’s death and resurrection, that he’d never spared a thought as to how such upheaval must have also affected his friend. Perhaps Sherlock had discovered things about himself in that time away. Perhaps, after all those long months and years of being alone, he had developed a distaste for it, had experienced the subtle shift from independence into loneliness, and, beholden with the rare and dubious gift of a second life, was intent to rectify it. John realised that the suit was another thing that Sherlock was asking of him, and he didn’t have the heart to refuse him again, even if it meant giving up whatever possibilities there might have been between them that John wasn’t yet certain he would ever feel ready to explore; even if meant losing Sherlock altogether. Sherlock deserved that much, John knew, and with a raw ache in his gut, hung the suit on the back of his bedroom door and made his way to the bathroom to begin the process of getting ready for the evening ahead.

 

*

 

The party was called for seven, and by six-thirty, John had to admit that, in the absence of appearing particularly happy, he did nonetheless look rather sharp.

The suit fit him perfectly; more perfectly than anything John had ever owned. It skimmed and ran over his body intimately, as if he’d spontaneously grown it, and the subtle lilac colour of the shirt seemed to give his skin a golden glow he couldn’t remember it having since just after he’d returned to London from the war. It was an interesting and troubling paradox, how fine and turned-out he was, all done up by Sherlock’s expert eye; meanwhile his insides churned, felt flayed open. The sight of himself dressed so smartly made him disheartened and remorseful of how uncareful they had been with one another, how much they’d ignored and let fester, how much they’d lost. Even without a tie, the whole get up felt somehow binding, like he was all trussed up for his own execution.

He descended the stairs to the main area of the flat and found Sherlock in the living room, staring pensively out of the window. He was dressed in full Sherlockian garb, all lavish and bespoke, soft black and well-fitted, and when he turned to face John, John noted that he’d chosen the aubergine dress shirt, a selection that didn’t match but subtly complimented John’s own pale purple.

Sherlock’s eyes ran the length of John’s body all the way up and then down again, absorbing the way the beautiful fabric tapered over John’s limbs, the way the colours and textures worked to accentuate John’s features in the way only the most thoughtful of choices could, before raising his gaze to meet John’s with a glimmer of approval. He didn’t smile exactly, but his mouth went a bit soft, at which John nodded briskly, and just like that, somehow John knew a tenuous truce had been declared.

“You look—I like the purple,” John offered.

Sherlock nodded back. “Thank you.”

“I mean, really _I_ should be thanking _you —_”

“Unnecessary.”

“Sherlock, this must have cost—”

“It was nothing,” Sherlock said, waving a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Good. Right, well. Thanks all the same. It’s lovely.” John grimaced. Lovely wasn’t the word for it. Unexpected, extravagant, unbearable; those were the words for it.

Sherlock put his hands in his pockets. “I’ve ordered a taxi.”

“At least let me pay for that, then.”

“I intend to.” Sherlock crossed the room to retrieve their coats. “The longer one, I think,” he said absently, handing John the coat he’d only just recently purchased, the one that was black and knee-length and vaguely reminiscent of his flatmate’s sweeping wool greatcoat.

John attempted a smile. “Knew you’d like that one.”

“Yes, well. It was only a matter of time before living with me improved your sartorial taste.”

“Tosser,” John rejoined, without heat. Sherlock simply turned and descended the stairs. John sighed, and followed Sherlock out, trusting that he had correctly deduced exactly when the cab would arrive.

 

*

 

The event was being held at of one of London’s premier hotels, and after checking their coats, John followed Sherlock through to the grand ballroom. It was huge, opulent, all creams and beiges and golds, with a large dance floor at the far middle, at the head of which a band appeared to be assembling their instruments. To one side there was a fully stocked and ornate-looking bar, done up in heavy polished wood and backed by gilded mirrors, with a large handful of cream-clothed high tops scattered in front, each with a small calla lily centrepiece. The other side was entirely populated by large, round tables covered with the same ecru cloths, extravagant place settings, and far more intricate and expensive-looking centrepieces overflowing with white and cream flowers, much like one might find at a wedding; and, also like a wedding, there was one large, long table at the front, with place settings and chairs only on the side facing the rest of the tables, with the most decadent of all the centrepieces blossoming out from its middle, tendrils and leaves and vines snaking their way down either side dotted with scattered petals. The room was lit, low and perfect, by graceful crystal chandeliers that dipped down from the high ceiling, and a string quartet were set up just next to the bar, playing low and careful music. To the far left, just beyond the dinner tables, were doors that appeared to lead to a balcony.

The ballroom was already replete with what looked to be a very posh crowd, and John felt another pang of conflicted gratitude for Sherlock’s gift. He felt he could at least pass for fitting in, noting that the men all looked like versions of Sherlock and Victor, perhaps older and wider, or shorter and more homely, but no less resplendent in fine and well-cut fabric. The women were a study in contrasts, each trying to outdo the next with a more vibrant colour or elaborately crafted dress, thicker ribbons of precious metals gleaming around wrists and necks, larger dollops of jewels sparkling and dripping from ears and fingers.

John let out a low whistle. “Look at all this. Never made sense to me, these kinds of things. Why not just donate the money you’d spend on the party and be done with it?”

“Because then Victor wouldn’t have the opportunity to show potential investors how _well_ he’s doing,” Sherlock replied. “As I mentioned before, this event has little to do with being _charitable_.”

Before John could respond, he spotted Victor breaking away from a small group of wealthy-looking people to make his way over to them, and instead of speaking, stretched his mouth into what he hoped emulated a genuine smile. “Victor,” he greeted, holding out his hand.

“John, Sherlock; I’m so glad you decided to come,” Victor said warmly and with all sincerity. He enveloped John’s hand between both of his own before turning to Sherlock and pulling him into his arms. Sherlock accepted the embrace stiffly, raising a tentative hand cup Victor’s shoulder as Victor pressed his mouth against Sherlock’s cheek before pulling away.

John ground his back teeth together in his attempt to hold his smile.

“You’ll be up at the head table, next to me,” Victor said, indicating the long, one-sided table at the front of the room, “but first, let’s get you two some drinks.” He set one warm, large-palmed hand on the small of each of their backs and guided them over toward the bar.

No sooner had the three situated themselves comfortably around a high top, cocktails in hand, than a kerfuffle nearby distracted them from conversation, and when they looked up, a bevy of glossily-painted women in a variety of cocktail dresses and their slick dates done up in textured wool and hair product took that as an affirmative signal to approach, tittering, each shoving another in front.

“Excuse us,” a young ginger man in charcoal tweed interrupted, “I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, aren’t you?”

Sherlock looked down his nose at the man and sniffed. John sighed. “Yes,” he said, “that’s us.”

The tallest of the group, a curvy, red-lipped brunette in the kind of black dress that took absolutely no prisoners, put her finely manicured hands on her hips and looked satisfied. “I _told_ them you’d be here. They didn’t believe me,” she added conspiratorially.

“Yes, here we are,” Sherlock said in a tone that brooked no patience.

“Are you here _together_?” Piped up a tiny blonde from the middle of the group.

“Oh, come _off_ it, Felicity!” A diminutive but stout dark-haired man next to her complained in a long-suffering tone.

Victor moved his body around the table, placing himself effectively as a barrier in front of John and Sherlock. “Pete, Felicity; lovely to see you. And you, Veronica,” he held his drink up, toasting to the tall brunette. “Have you seen some of the paintings on auction? They’re over near the balcony, on easels. Marvellous, they are, really brilliant up-and-coming artists on the London scene, an utter steal at what’s been bid so far. You should really have a look.” Victor spread his lips in a smile that was all bared teeth. “It’s for a good cause, too, don’t forget.”

It was like absolute magic; the group, properly cowed, threw platitudes and excuses at Victor’s feet, mumbling half-hearted accusations at one another as they scarpered.

“Er, thanks, mate,” John said awkwardly. He lifted his drink. “Cheers.”

“Not at all,” Victor replied smoothly. “They’re useful, that lot; gullible, rich, and overly curious about only that which is either inconsequential, or none of their business. Of course, they’re all utterly lacking in morality or empathy or basic human decency, a condition that is the inevitable result of a completely sheltered existence, but what can you do?” He smiled. “And whether they know it or not, or even care, they’ve just purchased their collective weight in laboratory equipment for the oncology centre simply by showing up, and it’s all down to you both that they did. You should know, I’m enormously grateful.” He gestured toward the dinner tables, where servers were starting to hover with wine bottles wrapped in linen in anticipation of the starter course. “Shall we?”

 

*

 

Dinner was a long and mostly boring affair, full of overwrought, if thankful, speeches from representatives of the centre’s board of directors, and of course, a lengthy effusion from Victor, generally acknowledging everyone in attendance, with particular mentions of his VIP guests by name. This did little to improve the steady traffic of would-be admirers from hovering near the head table once dessert had been served, and John found himself with the unenviable job of politely making conversation with strangers, while Sherlock, who had been seated between John and Victor, faced away from him and all but huddled with Victor, the pair talking in low and serious voices. The subtle and seamless strategy of it all was not lost on John.

During a lull in conversation with an elderly heiress, John attempted to catch threads of what was happening behind him.

“...I never intended…” he heard Sherlock say, before a server came by and refilled his wine, momentarily distracting him.

“...nothing of it... don’t think I wanted…” Victor’s voice wafted in and out of John’s range of hearing. Overwhelmed by curiosity, John excused himself from the woman’s attention and turned to put a hand on Sherlock’s arm just as Victor was concluding what seemed to have been a lengthy monologue.

“... anyway, the petty squabbles of youth. When _did_ we find the time to be angry over all that? All is forgiven, Bee, and always has been.” Victor raised his wine glass and clinked it against Sherlock’s, which remained on the table. “John, I must apologise for leaving you to the wolves all this time. You’re far too charming for your own good.”

John laughed uneasily, removing his hand to take a nervous gulp of wine. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“I’m certain it is,” Victor replied. “I was just telling Sherlock here how lucky he is to have snapped you up. You’re quite the catch. Handsome, talented. You’re a real renaissance man, John; soldier, doctor, writer…”

Sherlock snorted. “Have you read his blog?”

John was saved from responding to either of them by the lead singer of the band, who chose that moment to take to the microphone and request that the guests begin populating the dance floor.

“I’ll bet you two are just lovely together, dancing,” Victor said wistfully, lifting his drink to his lips as the band started playing something slow and tender, and couples made their way forward from their seats. John coughed and looked away, shifting uncomfortably. “Of course,” Victor continued, “you’ll be wanting to keep your relationship low-profile. Such a shame. In that case, perhaps I could request the honor, Bee?” He rose and held out a hand to Sherlock.

John felt his throat tighten and prickle as he awaited Sherlock’s reply.

Sherlock’s reply was to scoff, roll his eyes, and say, “Really, Victor. Do I seem like the waltzing type?”

Victor smiled easily. “You took your ballroom lessons like every other good public school boy, I’m certain. But have it your way; you always do. How about you, John?”

John shrugged. “No public school for me, though I can manage a box step if pressed.”

Victor laughed like liquid velvet and moved his proffered hand closer. “That’s good to know, as actually I was asking if you’d like to dance _now_.”

“Oh,” said John, feeling stupid. Well, that made sense, he supposed. This was what it was like for two cats to try and play the other for a mouse; he somehow had ended up being tossed around between them as they stalked one another. He didn’t particularly want to dance with Victor, but he couldn’t find a good enough reason to decline when Victor had done nothing but be the consummate host in both his own home and at his rather grand party. Nothing besides throw himself at John’s sham boyfriend, John supposed, but he wasn’t really allowed to be angry about that. “All right, then.”

John put his hand in Victor’s and, following him dutifully to the dance floor, noticed Sherlock’s narrow-eyed glare. There was an ancillary consequence John hadn’t considered; Victor had endeavoured to make Sherlock jealous, and it tore at John a little to think that it was more than probable that Sherlock’s jealousy wasn’t over him. He’d ruined all that, the possibility of any of that between them, and it felt bitterly fitting to be wrapped up in Victor’s scheme to win Sherlock’s affections. Whether or not what Victor was doing was morally right within John’s scope of understanding, it obviously came from a place of caring deeply about Sherlock, and for a very long time; who was John to deny Sherlock the opportunity for that kind of devotion?

Victor placed his forearm on John’s shoulder, resting his hand just underneath John’s neck, and he took John’s other hand in his, extending them, a subtle and surprising cue to John that he should lead. John gripped Victor around the waist and spared a thought to how unfairly lean and muscular the man was even at John’s own age. They began to move.

“Well, you certainly can manage more than a box step! You’re a marvellous dancer,” Victor’s charm was still in full force, it seemed, and John smiled politely up at him.

“Ta, I’m a bit rusty.”

“Nonsense; you’re perfect.” They wove their way around other couples, gliding in time with the music. “I must say again how wonderful it’s been to see Sherlock again, and to be able to meet you. He’s just as he was, in a lot of ways. It really takes somebody special to handle the likes of him.”

John felt that somehow Victor had laid an implication with that; perhaps that they were one in the same, as Victor was Sherlock’s erstwhile companion and confidante. What incensed John was that they weren’t the same, not nearly, not now that John had become disenchanted in his task, failing where Victor was still capable of success, and that Victor thought John so stupid the he could recklessly throw such assertions about, as if John wouldn’t cotton on to what was really being said.

Before he could think of a response, movement from the head table caught his attention. Sherlock, who had until then been alternately swiping insistently at his phone while watching them with a stormy and sullen air about him, had got up and travelled so rapidly away and into the crowd of socialites milling about between the dance floor and the rest of the ballroom that John hadn’t been able to get a bead on just where he was headed. John craned his neck and anxiously scanned the crowd.

Victor crouched a bit, ducking his head down and forward to catch John’s eye, smiling playfully. “All right, John? Where have you gone?”

“Sorry, I just—” John dropped his arms from Victor’s body and stepped back. “I know you’re trying to make him jealous, and it’s working. No, don’t say anything. It’s fine, it’s all fine. Only, I think it’s worked just a bit too well, and he’s taken off. I’m going to find him, okay? I’ll just—” he paused, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat. “I’ll just tell him to come and talk to you. Don’t worry. It’s really, really okay.”

Not waiting for a reply, John took off, moving as best he could through the throng of people in various states of inebriation, turning this way and that in an attempt to get an idea of where Sherlock might have gone. He spotted the doors to the balcony, opened to the evening air after the room had warmed and the guests had imbibed, and he headed toward them, thinking that if Sherlock were angry and frustrated, it wasn’t all that unlikely he’d look for the spot in which he’d be most successful in an attempt to acquire a cigarette.

The cool, damp air hit him simultaneously with the realisation that the balcony was empty of inhabitants, colonised only by a few high tops dotted with abandoned beverages, glasses occupied by half-melted ice or discarded garnish. Heaving a discouraged sigh, John turned back toward the doors, stopping short as he noticed Victor coming through them, walking purposefully in his direction. Victor stopped in front of him, a little closer than was comfortable, and John noticed he held two full champagne flutes in his hands, and was extending one to John. Without thinking, John took it.

“He’s not out here—”

“I know he’s not. John, he isn’t looking for you to follow him. He’s not looking for me to, either, and I’m certainly not interested in finding him. Let’s be adults about this and stop pretending we don’t all know what’s going on.” Victor took another step, mouth forming his wide, feline grin, and John was distracted by the gleam of his teeth.

“What’s going—how do you mean?” He wasn’t sure how Victor had got so _close_ all of a sudden. Everything felt jumbled and wrong, and John took a long pull from the champagne, as if that might help steady him. It markedly did not.

“He’s not upset. He’s off solving one of his little puzzles. At dinner, I may have let slip the pertinent details of a rather grisly and heretofore unsolved double murder from the nineteen-forties, the site of which happened to be a certain suite in this particular hotel.” Victor drained his own glass and set it on a high top next to him. “You know him, he’ll be sneaking along the corridors and swiping key cards for hours.”

John watched as Victor leaned one massive hand on the balcony and placed the other over his abdomen, leaning in ever closer. He stepped back. “I—I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Come now, John,” Victor said even as he advanced impossibly more, “I’ve been watching you. It’s clear enough that you love him; any fool can see that. But you’re conflicted, understandably so. After all this time, there’s still something there, something making you hesitate. I would know. It was there for me too.”

“I don’t understand,” John said, his voice clear and even against the fluttering music drifting out from the ballroom onto the balcony.

“Don’t be coy. You know I loved him. Of course I loved him; can you imagine knowing a creature like that before everything else, every _one_ else had got to him? That’s what I had, and I knew it. But he ruined it, he ruined everything, just like he always does, just like he did with you.” Victor’s face morphed briefly into a terrifying scowl before he recovered his predatory smile. “Could never leave well enough alone, our Sherlock.”

“Your dad,” John breathed. “The problems Sherlock found with the business… you _haven’t_ forgiven him. But it was so long ago—why? What happened?”

Victor chuckled, but it was low and cruel and held no memory of its previous warmth. He shook his head. “He does unforgivable things, John. He doesn’t even know what he’s done half the the time, and he never apologises, he just expects you to go on loving him, because you can’t help it, because it’s _him_.” Victor crowded John against the wall of the balcony and took John’s champagne glass from his hand. He finished the remainder in one swig and set it down on the table behind them. “Truth be told, I’ll always love him, and I think you will too. All the same, I can’t stand the sight of him; and after everything he’s put you through, something tells me that often enough, neither can you.”

Victor pressed closer, his breath huffing over John’s face in little wisps of warm mist across the cold night air. “But us, John. You and me; well, we’re a match, aren’t we? I’m enough like him, but I’m also enough like you. And you,” he stroked his hand down John’s arm before gripping harshly at John’s waist with his fingers, “ _you_ are _perfect_. I said it before, and I meant it. You’re perfect, and he’s an idiot not to see that, you know he is and you know he doesn’t;  but I see it. I barely had to look at you to see it, because I could _feel_ it. That’s the difference between us. I’m like him, but with _feelings_.”

It was as though John had altogether forgotten how to move or speak, struck as he was, mind whirling with the paradoxically coexisting truth and falsehood inherent in everything that Victor had said, the observations being dragged out in front of him, the warmth of Victor’s body so close to his own mingled with the cool, delicious grassy scent of him, confusing John’s senses. His heart pounded and his eyes grew wide as Victor continued.

“I meant every word of praise I’ve given you, John. It takes someone special, you _are_ someone special, to have dealt with him. But you don’t want to anymore, why would you? I can see it’s falling apart; maybe it was never steady to begin with. I can see that it’s not what you want it to be. It’s hard to let him go, believe me, I know, but there _are_ reasons. He’s selfish and thoughtless and indiscriminately cruel. He's fantastic in bed, I'll grant you, but he bores easily.” John choked a little at that, and Victor raised the hand not closed around John’s waist to cup his cheek, brushed long fingers back and forth against John’s skin in an attempt to soothe. “No, no, don’t worry, it wasn’t like that, not really. Don’t worry about _that_ ,” he crooned. “It was only the one time, the night before I left town. A sort of going-away present, I expect.” Victor chuckled a little. “It really was nothing—a fairly generous gift, maybe—but he’s a sweet little fuck, isn’t he? So focussed, precise. At least until he’s distracted by something else—or _someone_ else. How long do you really think one person can hold his interest? How long do you think he's capable of being amused by anyone?”

John wanted to flinch away, to find some space to think, to _breathe_ , but he felt frozen, trapped between the balcony and Victor’s intimidating, hypnotising figure, bound by his own bewilderment, his inability to separate reality from the game he and Sherlock been playing for likely much longer than Victor Trevor had been around to witness it. Victor’s eyes moved, his gaze running all over John’s face, his thumb gently rubbing at John’s cheekbone. John couldn’t do anything but stare back, mouth dry, jaw slack. “I could stay interested in you for years, John,” Victor continued, “for decades. I would never be merely _amused_ by you; I would _appreciate_ you. And _that_ is an entirely different thing.”

Before John could protest, decide if he even wanted to protest, before he could make a single sound, Victor swooped down and covered John’s mouth with his velvet lips, ran his tongue along John’s lower lip and, unthinking, John tilted his head and opened his mouth, and, still reeling, let Victor Trevor passionately take his kiss.


	5. Chapter 5

“Ah, Victor.”

Sherlock’s voice, cool and even, cut between them, and Victor jumped backward and away from John before turning to face him. “Ahead of schedule, I see. I won’t flatter myself that I knew from the beginning; but then again, neither did you.” Sherlock brushed imaginary dust from his jacket before raising his head and fixing Victor and John with an unyielding gaze that was so cold John’s throat seemed to freeze from it. “Nevertheless,” he continued, “your objective became clear soon enough.”

“I’m sure I’ve no idea as to what you could possibly be referring,” Victor replied, turning toward Sherlock and smoothing a palm down his front. John’s eyes widened even more at the useless prevarication. Surely Sherlock had seen them, had seen all of it, Victor’s arms around him, Victor’s mouth on his. Hell, this was Sherlock; he likely knew everything, even what he hadn’t seen.

“It’s all right Victor, take what you want. You always have. You’ve always seen everything in the world as though it ought to belong to you, and anything of mine as if it already did. Why should John be any different?” Sherlock laughed, but it was a hollow, bitter thing, and John cringed to hear it. “Only you can’t do it this time, can you? Something is just that little bit off, isn’t it? Have you worked out why yet? Are you clever enough?” Sherlock approached them as Victor took another step away in an attempt to create a more casual amount of space between himself and John, as if Sherlock hadn’t already seen, as if Sherlock didn’t already know. “Stand wherever you like,” Sherlock sneered, “it doesn’t make any difference to me. You can’t take John from me because he isn’t mine.”

Hot blood pounded under John’s skin, flames of guilt and fear crackling inside his ears, and he pushed his way past Victor. “Sherlock—”

“It’s fine, John. This was stupid, this whole idea was stupid.” Sherlock’s face was a mask betraying no emotion, and he looked ethereally calm, his features a relief map of angles and shadows all backlit by the glow of the party pouring out through the balcony doors. “John’s not my partner, not in that way; we’ve never been more than flatmates and friends, though I daresay the status of one, the other, or both of those is quite tenuous at the moment. He did this for me, and for you, because he is kind. You can do whatever you want, both of you, and it won’t matter to me. You can’t win this one, Victor. I’ve nothing to lose.”

John grasped for words, tried to think of a single thing he could say, anything at all to stop Sherlock from leaving, from shutting down, but Sherlock had already closed himself up tight against the prospect; he didn’t even look in John’s direction before he turned and marched away, weaving his way back inside and through the crowd with long strides. John took a few futile steps in pursuit before he was stopped by Victor’s harsh fingers encircling his bicep, digging in and pulling him back.

“Let him go, John,” Victor said. “Don’t you see? He’s admitted it himself; he doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t give a toss about anyone but himself. He never has. He keeps you around to help with his silly little puzzles, his _job_ , as it were.” Victor’s mouth pursed in disdain. “Leave him to it. Stop letting him treat you like the _sidekick_ , like _he’s_ the main attraction. You’re better than that, and you deserve more. I would never _use_ you like that, John. I intend to _treasure_ you.”

Victor tried to move in again, gripping both of John’s arms and looming large over his face. John pushed at his hands, shrugged Victor off of him, backed several steps away. “No,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re playing at with all this, but no. You’re meant to be his _friend_. You’re meant to _care_ about him. Even if you knew it wasn’t—” John broke off, unsure as to what exactly he and Sherlock were, or weren’t. “Even so. You saw him, just now. You heard him. Why would you _do_ something like this?”

“You kissed me back, John,” Victor protested. “I felt it. You _enjoyed_ it.”

“I _let_ you kiss me,” John admitted, “and I shouldn’t have done. I wish I hadn’t.”

Victor’s face changed entirely then. Every trace of amiability, of passion and interest was wiped utterly clean. What remained was a twisted and ugly moue of detached bitterness, his lips curling and nostrils flaring as his eyes deadened. “You want to know why?” Victor asked coldly. “All right. I’ll tell you why. Sherlock Holmes took everything I ever loved from me without a second thought, without even caring that he’d done it. He just did it on a whim, a flight of fancy, because he’s so _intelligent_ , such an _unstoppable genius_ that he couldn’t be bothered to think about the repercussions of his actions. He was just too eager to solve the puzzle, to prove himself _right_. He’s done the same to you already, maybe even worse; yet for some reason, you’re still in love with him.”

“We’re not—”

“I know that, John, I’m not an idiot,” Victor scoffed, “but you _are_ in love with him, and you can’t deny it. You know it’s a terrible idea, but you can’t stop yourself, can you? Maybe _this_ isn’t the time then; but another time will come, John, of that I can assure you. And when it does, you be sure to look me up, because I’m really going to enjoy saying I told you so.”

John shook his head. He would have laughed, had the situation been less dire. Victor had been after _him_ , after all that. What had truly happened between Victor and Sherlock all those years ago was still something of a mystery, but it wasn’t one he had time to unravel under the dubious moonlight out on that balcony, staring down a bitterly thwarted Victor Trevor while Sherlock was god-knows-where, labouring under innumerable misapprehensions and likely deciding everything ahead of John, without him, excluding John entirely from the proceedings as he was forever wont to do. John didn’t know what he wanted to say to Sherlock, or what outcome he hoped to achieve, but it was clear he wouldn’t accomplish anything by interrogating Victor.

“I’m going to find him,” John said, moving swiftly toward the doors. He turned back for a moment, resting a hand on the doorframe and holding Victor’s eye with a steady and dangerous glare. “I don’t know what he did to you back then, what you did to each other, but know this: you and me? We are _not_ the same. Whatever happens between us, I would _never_ do to Sherlock what you just did. No matter what. That will _never_ happen. Are we clear?”

John didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and charged back inside.

 

*

 

It became evident that Sherlock had left the party entirely after John had thoroughly searched the first floor, and, upon handing his ticket to the coat check attendant, was given only his own coat in return. Obviously Sherlock had managed to retrieve his.

John allowed the concierge to summon a taxi for him. “Two-two-one Baker Street, please,” he said as he entered the cab. It was almost eleven o’clock, and he didn’t know where else he ought to go and look. He didn’t know if he wanted to see Sherlock in order to talk to him, or just to ensure that Sherlock was safe, that it wasn’t a danger night. John couldn’t remember the last time he’d been afraid of a danger night, and his stomach clenched fiercely as he pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window, shutting his eyes against the thought.

After paying the fare, John all but sprinted up the stairs to 221B, stubbornly hoping that Sherlock would be there, huffy and indignant in the midst of a typical strop, emanating the usual and oddly comforting amount of disdain for everyone and everything around him, curled up on himself on the sofa or playing loud, atonal music, hour be damned, artfully framed by the dramatic curtains draping the living room window. What he did not expect was to find complete, empty darkness; no fire lit, not a single light switched on, not even the cool fluorescent blue of the kettle boiling.

He heard a small noise from Sherlock’s bedroom, something akin to a grunt or a groan, and without thinking, he barrelled across the kitchen, shedding and carelessly dropping both his coat and suit jacket on his way, and barged through the door, flicking on the light, dreading yet half expecting to find Sherlock lying on his bed with a tourniquet around his arm and a needle in his hand.

Sherlock’s bed was empty; in fact, it took more than a moment for John to realise that Sherlock was right next to him, still in his purple shirt and black trousers, wedged almost behind the open door, supporting the weight of his upper body against the framed print of the periodic table with his forearm, his head jammed up against it. John moved into the room, pushing the door almost shut behind him in an effort to give Sherlock more space. “We should talk about this,” he ventured.

Sherlock laughed, low and bitter, his face pressed against his arm, and then snapped up and turned around in a swift, fluid movement that caught John entirely off guard. Sherlock peered down at him, his cold verdigris eyes cataloguing every detail of John’s features, every tiny betrayal his body couldn’t help but give away in spite of himself. John stood all the more firmly, squaring his shoulders and refusing to break away from Sherlock’s scrutiny.

“Should we?” Sherlock seethed. “What would you like to talk about? Which would you like to review first: the part where I confessed my feelings for you and you rejected me, or the part where you allowed yourself to be thoroughly seduced by the same person who—” Sherlock’s voice caught. “By _Victor_.” He pulled his shoulders taut and glared at John, allowing his voice to drop to the frigid, unfeeling register he used when he wanted to slice clean through another person, right at the jugular. “I don’t know what it is that you want, but I’ve already offered you everything I have, and to no avail. Apparently, so has Victor. I wouldn’t begin to wish that I understood your desires, but I must say I am rather curious as to your motives. What are you still doing here, John? Why are you doing this?”

“I—” John faltered. “I don’t know, Sherlock. I just—I just need to be sure you’re okay.”

Sherlock smiled, sneering and feral. “Now you are concerned for my well-being? How interesting. Why is that, John? Is it the drugs?  I’ve not given you reason to doubt my sobriety before.”

“It’s not just that—”

“No, it wouldn’t be,” Sherlock mused, tapping his long fingers against his mouth. “It’s something else; you cannot love me, but you still feel _responsible_ for me. I’ve already died once on your watch; can’t imagine you’d want to let anything like that happen again. Embarrassing, that. Rather bad for the ego.”

John let his mouth drop open and his gut roiled hard as a wave of nausea threatened to overtake him. “ _Sherlock_ ,” he whispered, stunned, recoiling as if slapped.

“Not to worry, John. I’ve no intention of dying again, not over this. Of course it upset me, to see him touch you, kiss you; but you’ve already made your feelings perfectly clear. I have no right to jealousy, you are not mine to touch or to kiss.” Sherlock moved forward, towered over John, breathed hot over his face as he gritted out between nearly-clenched teeth, “but as I’ve already mentioned, I _have_ died for you once, or as good as; I gave up everything, with no guarantee of success, to spare your _life_. Can you not spare me this one dignity and simply _leave me alone_?”

John couldn’t stop it, the raw and animal thing that was clawing at him from the inside, awoken and spurred to combat by Sherlock’s vicious accusations, its rage singeing his skin, running hot through his veins as his vision blurred and reddened at the edges. He shoved Sherlock, hard, hard enough that Sherlock’s head smacked painfully against the wall behind him. John grabbed Sherlock’s wrists and pinned them to either side of his head, leaned on them with all his weight, pressing his body up against Sherlock’s and pulling up so close that humid, angry breath huffed out against Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock squirmed against the edge of the picture frame that must have been digging hard into his lower back. Unable to writhe out of John’s grasp, he raised his head, trying to escape in any small way, but he didn’t take his eyes off John’s.

“You,” John breathed, low and dangerous against Sherlock’s jugular notch, “ _you_ have absolutely _no right_ to ask _me_ to spare you _anything_. Do you understand me, Sherlock? Am I getting through to you? Does what I’m saying even begin to penetrate the thick skull around that enormous bloody brain of yours?” His voice grew louder as he spoke, and he punctuated the last three words by slamming Sherlock’s wrists hard against the wall, twisting the thin skin there and digging in with his blunt nails. “I will spare you _nothing_!”

"John," Sherlock said quietly.

"You think you're so fucking brilliant, Sherlock. So _fucking_ intelligent, you are." John laughed, loud and cruel, and Sherlock flinched. "I've never met anyone more ignorant in my life."

It was such a small sound; John couldn’t even be sure it was meant to be derisive, but it was a breathy little snort, and it tipped a switch in John’s brain.

John snarled, moved one hand from a wrist to the back of Sherlock’s head, tugging sharply on Sherlock’s hair and wrenching him in such an expert move that Sherlock had barely taken a breath before he was turned around, helpless, one arm twisted behind his back, upper body curved backward, his head held at a painful angle above John’s good shoulder. John twined his fingers in the thick black curls, gripped and pulled, and Sherlock let out a low whine.

The noise broke through the buzzing in John’s head and his grip faltered.

Sherlock tensed; then he thrashed and flailed like a wild thing, bucked up against John, and John fell back, catching himself on the edge of Sherlock’s bed. Sherlock loomed over him, eyes flashing, _spitting_ rage, grabbed John by the collar of his lilac shirt and hauled him up from where he was half-seated.

“Is _this_ what you want, John? To bully me? To _hurt_ me? It’s not enough that you hate me for saving your life, it’s not enough that you let him —that you let _Victor_ , of all people—no, that couldn’t possibly do the trick; you had to follow me home, humiliate me, shove me, make me _feel_ how much you despise me. Don’t you think I get it, John? Don’t you think I _know_?” He stopped then, his focus shifting to his own hand pulling violently on John’s shirt, and at the sight of it, his face crumpled, all the fight escaping his body like so much steam rising and cooling in the air around him. He released John’s collar and stepped back, let his arms fall lax at his sides. For a long moment they stared at each other, breath heaving, eyes locked.

“John, please,” Sherlock’s voice broke in a way John had never heard, not even through the muffled static of a mobile call warped by altitudinal wind. He lifted his head, staring resolutely at the wall behind John. “Do what needs must, then. Hit me, as many times as you need, whatever it takes, please just do it, just get it over with; anything, just don’t—you _can’t —_” he cut off there, the rest of it a muted and strangled sound in his throat.

John stood. “I can’t _what_?” He asked, low and dangerous, stepping forward into Sherlock’s space.

Sherlock looked down, shook his head.

John grabbed him by the shoulders, whirled him around pushed him hard so that his knees hit the back of the bed. Sherlock sat, unmoving, head still down. John shook him. “I can’t _what_ , Sherlock?” He was yelling now, yelling and shaking Sherlock by the shoulders, and Sherlock refused to look up at him, to meet his eye, and John moved one hand to his chin and tilted it up to expose his face.

Sherlock’s eyes were bright and wet.

“No,” John breathed, “no. You don’t get to do this to me. Do you hear me? You do _not_ get to manipulate me because you _fucking_ jumped off a _bloody_ rooftop.” He shoved again, harder, and Sherlock landed on his back. John leaned over him, braced himself with one knee to the side of Sherlock’s hip and grabbed Sherlock’s shirt, shut his eyes and pounded at Sherlock’s chest with his fists. “I will _not —_I _won’t —_” he panted, his blows landing one after the other until Sherlock finally grabbed John’s hands, wrapped his own around them, held them still against him as they both struggled for breath. John opened his eyes.

Sherlock lifted his head at the same time John dropped his, their mouths crushing together with brutal force, something more like a punishment than a kiss. John pulled his hands free, clawed at Sherlock, bit and worried at his lips, and Sherlock groaned and pulled John forward as he scrambled back on the bed. John stalked him on hands and knees, pushing his tongue into Sherlock’s mouth and mashing his lips gracelessly against Sherlock’s. It hurt more than the actual fighting had done, and John grunted as Sherlock whimpered into it.

John grabbed Sherlock’s face in his hands, digging his fingers harshly into Sherlock’s jaw and temple, bit down hard on Sherlock’s lower lip and tasted copper. He pulled back and watched Sherlock’s tongue follow him, chase the drop of blood that welled up and threatened to spill down toward his chin, slowly lick his lip clean.  Sherlock smiled then, and it was all submissive, savage heat, and John surrendered to a full-bodied, groaning shudder as he chased that ridiculous mouth again, sucked hard on that sharp tongue and pressed down against that willful, imperious body.

Every bit of reason, every hesitation, his entire spectrum of common sense had been overtaken by the basest part of John’s brain, the reptilian part, the part that screamed at him to _scratch bite fuck kill_ , the part that had no use for the future, no regard for consequence, that couldn’t care about anything but _blood sex sweat Sherlock_ all laid out underneath him, smelling of spice and fear and expensive shampoo, supine and supplicant, slipping his shirt buttons open to reveal an ever-widening vee of flesh nearly the colour of skimmed milk.

Then a large, warm hand snaked its way down John’s body and palmed him through his trousers, the heel of it rubbing against him, and he let out a tiny, helpless little cry as he felt himself pulse and thicken.

“Let me,” Sherlock growled, and, met with no resistance, raised his hands to pull John’s hands from his face. Deftly flipping them over, Sherlock spread himself out over John, pressed John’s wrists against the mattress to either side of his head, mouthed and nibbled along John’s neck, all the while slowly rutting up against John’s thigh. John let out a tiny moan as he felt Sherlock’s erection pressed there, hot and solid.

“Do you feel me?” Sherlock whispered, his voice husky and filthy, “I _want_ to; just _let_ me.”

John threw an arm over his face, overwhelmed by the sensation of Sherlock slithering down his body as he unbuttoned John’s shirt, pushed the sides apart and brushed his lips and tongue all over John’s chest and sternum, dragged his tongue down the line of John’s abdomen as he used eager fingers to undo John’s flies.

“Yes, John,” Sherlock murmured into the downy trail of light brown hair that started at his navel, widened and darkened and disappeared beneath the waist of John’s trousers, “just let me. Just stay here, stay right where you are; don’t even _think_ about moving; let me do this for you.” Sherlock tugged John’s trousers down only enough to reveal his cotton-covered cock, and he pressed his hot wet mouth against it, tongueing John through his pants. “Let me do this for you,” he breathed into the fabric, into John’s skin, “anything, _anything_ , just don’t—you won’t, will you?” Sherlock licked and sucked along the cotton, “you can’t, I won’t let you, just let me—”

 _You don’t —you can’t—_the words echoed hard against John’s skull; the switch in his brain flipped back.

John gasped, pulled sharply away, shoved Sherlock off of him with his arms and his legs and the sheer force of his horror, scrambled off the bed, doing up his trousers and pulling his shirt back over his torso. Sherlock rolled back and, with an unfair amount of grace, glided off the bed and toward John.

“No—” John gasped, putting out a hand, “stop. Just stop it, Sherlock!”

“John—”

“What were you going to say just then?” John’s face and chest were flushed, stung with overripe arousal and rage. “Finish it! What can’t I do? What don’t you want me to do?”

Sherlock’s mouth moved soundlessly.

John shook his head. “I can’t _what_ , Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s voice was a low and ruined whisper. “You can’t leave.”

John laughed, a high and empty sound that held no warmth. “I see,” he said. “No, I really do see, Sherlock. I actually get it. I _deduced_ it. Aren’t you proud of me, yeah? _I_ deduced _you_.”

Sherlock didn’t speak, just levelled his gaze on John’s face.

“This is what you do, then? To fix things, to get what you want,” John continued, swiftly rebuttoning his shirt, tucking it into his trousers. “Is this what you did with Victor? Is this why you slept with him? Because you didn’t want him to _leave_?” It was horrible and cruel and as soon as John said it, as he watched Sherlock’s eyes widen and face contort miserably at hearing it, he regretted it. He regretted all of it; everything that had happened, all the way back to the very first day he pretended he wasn’t furious with Sherlock for being alive.

He pressed his hand across his eyes, squeezing them shut with his forefinger and thumb. “Jesus—I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sherlock, it’s none of my business, whatever happened with you and him. But you can’t just _do_ this. _We_ can’t just —it won’t solve anything.” John lowered his hand, looked at Sherlock and took ragged breath. “I—I think I _should_ leave. For the night at least, before it gets any worse. We both need some space to —well, to think about things. I just don’t know what to do anymore. And from what happened just now, I really don’t think that you do, either.”

Sherlock didn’t reply. He dropped his chin to his chest and let his whole body sag, as if a tap had been turned on, letting whatever had given him the strength to remain upright drain out all at once.

“I’m going to go… I don’t know where, but I’m going to go and I’m going to think about what we ought to do, because _this_ ,” John gestured between them, “is not working. I will come back, and we will talk about this. You have to promise me that you’ll be here when I do.”

Sherlock moved his head just a little. It could have a been a nod; it might have been nothing.

“I mean it, Sherlock. You should think about it too, about what _you_ want to do. I can’t promise what will happen after, but I _will_ come back. Please be here when I do.” John turned, and then thinking better of it, turned back. “And if there’s a case, you’re to text me, not go running off on your own with no backup, all right?”

Sherlock sat back down on the edge of his bed and folded his hands in his lap, palms-up. He looked down at his interwoven fingers. “Go, John,” he said quietly.

John paused for a moment, searching Sherlock’s defeated figure, the room around him, his own warring thoughts, hoping to find something, anything at all left to scrape up from the bottom of the growing chasm between them that might make what was happening any easier, but he came up empty. There was nothing left to say; John went.


	6. Chapter 6

It wasn’t so late in the evening that the pavements were deserted, but it was late enough that the people who populated them were generally happily rowdy with drink, sport, or romance, or any combination of the three, and John had only gone a few blocks before he realised that walking wasn’t quite the thing. Every happy couple he saw increased his urge to put his fist through something that was liable to be painful and expensive.

He turned the corner and headed toward a local pub, the one at which he’d become something of a regular when Sherlock was dead and Greg would come round once a week, or more frequently on the bad ones, to take him for a couple of pints. They liked it because it wasn’t the sort of place you went to meet somebody, or to see and be seen; it was the sort of place you went to scribble ideas or sketches on napkins, or watch a match in relative quiet, or to simply stare into the amber liquid in front of you until you drained it away, unmolested by other patrons. It was the sort of place to go when you didn’t want anything from the world other than for it to leave you be.

He took a seat on the emptier side of the bar. George wasn’t behind the bar just then, but that wasn’t unusual. It had rounded the bend past midnight, and George tended to disappear for long moments during the later, quieter hours to do any number of things, many of which he likely wasn’t being paid to do. In short order he’d return, the stale and spicy smell of pipe tobacco lingering around him, or crumbs resembling that evening’s dinner special dotted along the sides of his mouth.

After a minute had passed, George came in, the kitchen door swinging merrily behind him. “Ah, look who it is! All right, John? Haven’t seen you in an age,” he called out.

“All right,” John lied, turning toward George. “Yourself?”

“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” George nodded to someone behind John who’d just come through the door, and then turned his back to pour a glass of something brown from a bottle taken off of the highest shelf. He turned and plunked it down in front of John. “There we are, Glenlivet eighteen, neat.”

John stared at it for a few seconds, trying to recall a time George had ever got a drink wrong. “Um, I didn’t actually order—”

“Nevertheless, it is what you want, is it not?” The familiar honey-dipped tenor came from behind John, and he turned to find Mycroft Holmes seated rather incongruously on the barstool next to him. “Perhaps not what you were prepared to order, but that hardly matters; it’s been added to my tab. One more, if you please, George.” Mycroft appraised him with circumspect eyes. “Good evening, John.”

“Jesus Christ, Mycroft,” John said, startled, “someone ought to put a bell on you.” John’s feelings toward the elder Holmes had softened, conceivably more quickly and with less reservation than his feelings for Sherlock himself, after Sherlock had returned and explained everything, vindicating Mycroft his trespasses in the events leading up to his supposed death. Mycroft still wasn’t at the top of his Christmas card list, but John had settled back into comfortable habit with him, taking the piss as much as he pleased and going out of his way to hinder and thwart Mycroft’s attempts to insinuate himself into his and Sherlock’s business.

Mycroft smiled benignly as George deposited a generous tumbler of scotch in front of him. “You don’t want to know what happened to the last person who tried.”

John sighed. “What is it, then? Why are you here? How did you know _I_ was here?”

“ _John_.” Mycroft favoured him with his _you know better than that_ look, chin tilted and eyebrows raised, the look John had always hated, ever since he first received it in an abandoned warehouse all those years ago upon his refusal to hold out his hand.

“I’m not going to talk about Sherlock,” John warned. “I’m not in the mood.”

Mycroft ignored him. “To say that my brother is a complicated man would be an understatement; he is beyond complicated. He is damaged.” Mycroft took a sip of his drink. “I myself was not aware of the level of damage caused by his relationship with Victor Trevor, until recently.”

John was annoyed to find himself rising to the bait. “How do you mean?”

“I knew Sherlock had made a… _friend_ at university,” Mycroft mouthed around the word as though it had an unexpectedly bitter flavour, “and I knew that the Trevor name was a respected one. I left well enough alone. When Victor left the country, Sherlock was not particularly forthcoming with his feelings about the event, as is his way.” He paused. “I admit I did not know to ask. I was busy with my own affairs at the time, and did not have the means at my disposal with which to monitor Sherlock’s.”

“You know, rather that setting up a city-wide network of security cameras and bugging his flat, you could just _talk_ to him,” John said, exasperation bleeding from his tone, “you could just talk to _each_ _other_.”

Mycroft’s eyes narrowed. “Interesting advice.”

John raised his chin and took a defiant swig of scotch.

“Once I was made aware of Mister Trevor’s return to London, and his intention to reconnect with Sherlock, I felt it prudent to investigate,” Mycroft continued.

John’s brow furrowed. “How’d you know Victor was in town?”

“One does not see one’s little brother’s name on the VIP guest list of an exclusive party hosted by a man he purportedly drove to ruin without making a few casual inquiries.” Mycroft paused to examine his immaculately manicured fingernails. “That, and my attention was drawn to a rather large sum of money recently charged to the family clothier.”

John winced. “Mycroft, I’m sorry about that. I’d no idea he was going to do that. I shouldn’t have accepted it.”

“John.” Mycroft looked him straight on then, unwaveringly in the eye, and uncomfortable as John was, he found himself unable to look away. “You must know that there is precious little I would not do for my brother, that I would not give to him.” He sighed. “If only he would learn to ask for it.”

John paused at that, shifting his focus to his hands that were cupped around his drink. It was true: Sherlock never asked for things that he could get by taking, by manipulation or force, no matter how willing people might be to grant his wishes. And yet, how many times in the past several days had Sherlock asked John for something, had Sherlock offered himself up to John in the form of a request, baring his naked desires, making himself vulnerable to the possibility of rejection? Nevermind the past several days; when _hadn’t_ Sherlock done this with John, treated him as the exception to all of his rules about people, that people were boring and undesirable and undeserving of his courtesy?

More to the point, if there was precious little Mycroft wouldn’t do for Sherlock, then there was even less that Sherlock wouldn’t do for John; _hadn’t_ done for John. Sherlock had pawned his entire life so that John could live his own, with no reason to believe he might ever get it all back. He _didn’t_ have it all back, John realised, he _couldn’t_ , because John was keeping that last bit of it from him, the last fragment of the world Sherlock knew, the home he had, John was keeping it from him to _punish_ him for his troubles, for leaving everything he loved because he had only the choice to leave it lest it be taken from him by force. Sherlock had chosen to sacrifice himself, and after years of what could be little more than a series of well-timed and consecutive miracles, all the while still choosing to place himself between John and whatever threat remained to John’s life, he’d finally been allowed to return, and had only asked that he be allowed to recover what he’d left. When that hadn’t worked, when John had held Sherlock’s life hostage for the sake of his pride, in his own way, albeit wildly inappropriate and emotionally clueless, Sherlock had tried to offer John _more_.

John slumped forward, putting his elbows on the edge of the bar and taking his face into his hands. He rubbed his eyes. “Jesus,” he said to himself.

Mycroft, who had maintained a watchful silence during John’s self reflection, gently but briefly put his hand on John’s arm. “John,” he said quietly, “He was aware that this might happen. That you might not be able to forgive him. He had hoped—well, he had hoped. However, he did understand that it was a risk. I’m here merely to let you know that you should not feel as though it is your responsibility to do anything that you do not wish to do. If you determine that it would be best for you to leave Baker Street, there are reinforcements in place to ensure Sherlock’s continued protection; from others and from himself.”

John looked up then and met Mycroft’s penetrating stare. He blinked.

“I wish only to advise you,” Mycroft continued with the sort of measured caution he used when it went without saying that the words he was about to utter had been carefully chosen and deliberately arranged, “that whatever you decide, you should not allow my brother’s past to determine your future.”

John inhaled sharply. That was exactly what he’d been doing; that was _all_ he’d been doing. He’d been so wrapped up in everything that had already happened that he wasn’t trying at all to understand what else there could be. He’d been retreating into the past as inexorably as Sherlock had been running from it, and they’d missed each other along the way, desperate as they both were to avoid the thing that threatened them most. With the way John had been treating him, Sherlock must have been terrified that his prior actions would preclude his chance at ever recovering his future. John suddenly discovered that he had been paralysed by his own fear, panicked at the thought of giving himself to Sherlock, as he had done before and more besides, knowing that he might lose Sherlock all over again, and that if he did, this time the loss would be unbearable. So he’d closed himself off and pushed Sherlock away, continued denying it, the unavoidable fact that he was in love with Sherlock, Sherlock whom he’d lost and mourned and felt aimless without, and that was what scared him more than anything.

Victor Trevor had simply shown up at an opportune moment to breed and nurture all that agitation, had given Sherlock another reason to run from his past, and John another reason to doubt his future place in Sherlock’s life. Victor had seen it all, had fed on it, had endeavoured to help deprive Sherlock of something that mattered to him, something that even Victor could see was just out of Sherlock’s reach, and although John had left Victor standing out on that balcony by himself, somehow, John realised with a sickening sink of his stomach, he’d unintentionally let Victor win. He’d confirmed both Sherlock’s worst fears, and his own.

John emptied the rest of his glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and slid out of his seat. “Mycroft, I’m sorry—I just. I have to do something.”

Mycroft stood and looked down his aquiline nose at him with something as close to approval as John had ever seen cross his face. “Yes, I thought you might.”

John reached for his billfold.

Mycroft held up a hand. “Please. I did say it was covered. George and I are old friends.”

“Yeah… about that. How _do_ you know this place?”

Mycroft graced John with one of his mildly amused expressions, the corner of his mouth lifting in the semblance of a smile. “Detective Inspector Lestrade sends his regards.”

“Right,” John said, taking a furtive inventory of the pub. It was all dark corners and quiet conversations. His eyebrows lifted. “I see.”

“You did mention that you were in a hurry,” Mycroft said pointedly.

“Yes,” John agreed, and headed toward the door. He turned back. “Goodnight, Mycroft. And thanks.”

“Goodnight, John.” Mycroft seated himself once again and took up his drink. “If there is anything you need, please know that you may contact me at any time. Regardless.”

John nodded once, and then left.

 

*

 

On his walk back to 221B, John reflected on everything that had happened between him and Sherlock, and with the light of his newfound awareness falling down around him like the wide beam of a streetlamp, he inwardly cringed at the revelation of all he’d got wrong, at how poorly he’d handled things. He’d been careless with Sherlock. He’d been utterly reckless with the person he valued most, and there was so much hurt there, so much pain in everything Sherlock had said and the way Sherlock had looked when John left that he knew that if he didn’t fix this, if he didn’t find a way to make this all right, he’d lose Sherlock again, and this time, Sherlock wouldn’t come back. Were he not so wearily miserable, he’d have laughed at the irony of it; Sherlock had been trying to give him everything he’d wanted, all along, but he’d been too stubborn to accept it.

There was the crux of it: John had rejected Sherlock’s clumsy attempts, and not just once. He knew it was his turn to be vulnerable, to flay himself open for Sherlock to see everything he’d been keeping so closely guarded; that is, if Sherlock would even let him.

After entering the flat and ascending the stairs, John found Sherlock seated in his leather and chrome chair, arms draped along the armrests, gaze fixed at middle distance. As John walked into the sitting room, he didn’t stir, immobile but for his mouth moving around a quiet, fight-roughened voice.

“That was fast,” he said, low and toneless, “have you come to pack your things?”

“No,” John said, moving to sit in his armchair across from Sherlock. The air in the flat was thick with the stench of stale smoke and there were ashes by Sherlock’s feet. John arranged himself and stared at Sherlock straight on, refusing to speak again until Sherlock finally met his eye. “Smoking, are we?”

Sherlock scoffed, but didn’t reply.

“I wish you wouldn’t. It’s terrible for you.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “At least do it outside. It reeks in here.”

“What do _you_ care,” Sherlock snarled. “It’s not like it will be any of your concern for much longer.”

“I’m not going to leave, Sherlock.”

“Not yet,” Sherlock muttered, and he looked away.

“Not ever,” John replied. The steadiness with which he delivered the promise echoed in the set of his jaw and the line of his brow.

Sherlock’s head snapped up, his features softening minutely before he once again composed his face into its typical expressionless armour. “I don’t think you should presume to know the future.”

“Why not? You do all the time.”

“I make inferences based on past behaviour. It’s entirely different,” he sniffed.

“I really don’t think it is, Sherlock,” John said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. He began ticking off points on his fingers. “You run off and leave me places, you use—no, you _destroy_ my things, you drug my coffee —”

“That was _one_ time —”

“That’s one time too many for just about anybody else,” John interrupted. He clasped his hands together, gritting out the rest of it between his teeth. “You faked your own death and you made me mourn the person I love most in the world for _two years_ , and dammit, I’m still here, Sherlock,” he unclasped his hands, made a sweeping gesture in front of him. “I don’t know what that says about me, but I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Sherlock peered at him, blinking rapidly. “The person… you.” He cleared his throat.

“God, Sherlock. Don’t you know?” John leaned even further forward in his chair, searched Sherlock’s face beseechingly. He gripped his kneecaps with his palms, shaking his head. “How can you, of all people, not know?”

Sherlock moved his hands to his lap and folded them, watched as he placed one on top of the other, interweaving his fingers. “I did know. I _thought_ I knew. You said you didn’t—that you couldn’t.”

John sighed. “I was hurt. And I was scared. If I let you in that far, and I lost you again—” he cut himself off. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t wrong. You didn’t get it wrong.” He paused, toying with the button on one of his cuffs. “I was terrified of losing this, what you and I have; of going through all that again. I just didn’t realise all I’d been doing was already throwing it away.”

Sherlock raised his head and their eyes locked for an unbearably long, heavy moment. John’s throat tightened and he felt hot under the skin on his face and hands and neck. Sherlock finally said, in little more than a low whisper, “So what happens now?”

John wanted to hold out his hand, to pull Sherlock into his arms, to comfort and soothe and tell him it was fine, it was all fine, but he found that he couldn’t; not yet. Sherlock looked so uncharacteristically fragile that John was a little afraid he might break him. Instead he stood and gestured toward the kitchen. “Now, we make tea—well, _I_ make tea; and, we talk.”

 

*

 

They sat on the sofa, hands wrapped around mugs, Sherlock cross-legged and John facing him, with one leg bent in front of him, the foot of the other on the floor. There was a scant handful of centimetres between them and though John wanted to, he still wasn’t touching Sherlock.

“You know,” John said gently, “I wouldn’t have—with Victor. That would never have happened.”

Sherlock’s lips thinned. “You _did_.”

“ _He_ did. I let him, I admit. But I didn’t want that.” John paused. “He said some things —”

“Yes, you mentioned earlier that you were made privy to the more personal aspects of our acquaintance.” Sherlock scowled. “He shouldn’t have told you that.”

“That isn’t what I meant. I don’t care about that. Only if he hurt you,” John amended. “He said you took everything he loved from him. What did he mean by that?”

Sherlock looked down into his nearly untouched tea as if the answer to John’s query might be floating around the surface of it.

“Sherlock, what _happened_?” John pressed.

“I told you there was a problem with his father, with the business. That’s true.” Sherlock took a deep breath, as if anticipating one of his long, rapid-fire deductions, but when he spoke, it was much more slowly, and quietly. “The company was hemorrhaging money. Victor Senior was in poor health, and only getting worse. Victor stood to inherit everything, including a substantial amount of debt. 

“I’d not yet done any formal detective work, but Victor knew my methods. I told you before how we used to bet on and barter with one another’s unique… skills. Victor asked for me to take a closer look at the way funds were being dispersed. We were competitive, too confident for our own good, arrogant and imprudent in our behaviour, but we were—he was my friend. The only friend I’d ever had. I didn’t want to see him reduced to ruin.”

“Is that—” John cut in, and then hesitated, arranging his words. “Was this when you were using? Did he—”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Sherlock said softly.

John nodded and took a sip of his tea. “Of course. Go on.”

“It didn’t take long for me to determine that the money moving out of the company didn’t match up with its expenses. From there I just had to follow the paper trail. There’s always a trail, no matter how hard they try, how high up above the masses they think they sit; Victor Senior thought he was infallible, that much was clear.” Sherlock’s tone turned bitter. “He was embezzling money to cover up his own filth. He had an erstwhile mistress who turned up with a child that she claimed was his. In his circles, she would have been considered rather a woman of ill repute, and I assume he didn’t want to risk consulting medical professionals for the sake of certainty; confidentiality laws or not, that kind of information always seems to find its way to the public. Instead he capitulated to her blackmail, paying her large sums of money, regularly and often, to keep her quiet. Her demands only grew over time.”

John let out a low whistle and placed his mug on the coffee table. He resettled himself just a bit closer to Sherlock, as close as he dared to get, close enough to breathe in the warm, spicy smell of him that was only barely compromised by a faded trace of cigarette smoke.

“Once I found out the truth, I—I didn’t think. I’d solved the case, a proper case, and in my haste to prove it, the thrill of such I had not yet experienced, I neglected to account for the negative impact my discovery would have on Victor and his family.” Sherlock swallowed. “I presented my evidence to Victor in the presence of his mother and sister. In hindsight, I realise my lack of discretion was unforgivable. At the time…”

John put a careful hand over Sherlock’s, which were gripping his mug so hard his fingertips were white. “At the time?” He coaxed.

“I thought—isn’t it better to know? To have all the facts? Why should Mrs. Trevor stay with a man who was unfaithful to her? Why shouldn’t Victor’s sister understand why her own inheritance was compromised? Why don’t people want to know these things, John?” Sherlock’s voice registered a frustrated and pleading note. “Why are people so afraid of the _truth_?”

“Oh, Sherlock.” John rubbed Sherlock’s thumb with his own. “I think we’ve both proven there are a fair few reasons for that.”

Sherlock slumped forward, staring at John’s hand as it moved soothingly around his. “I suppose.”

John squeezed once, and then reached for his mug, brought it to his mouth and sipped his tea. “What happened after that?”

Sherlock sighed. “After that, Victor Senior died suddenly, even for his condition, the day after his wife confronted him, threatening to expose him. Officially of heart failure, but he was constantly surrounded by private doctors, and had access to a variety of medications. It’s always been my suspicion that he purchased advice on exactly which pills to take, and in what quantity, in order to stop his heart. I imagine Victor came to a similar conclusion.

“In the following weeks, Victor worked tirelessly to save the business and his family name; as I understand it, he was able to leverage some of his personal assets to buy out the rest of his family, and he uncovered enough unsavoury information about his father’s mistress to keep her quiescent. His mother and sister took the money and fled, left him alone to build the company back up from the scraps that were left of it, even going so far as to change their surname in an effort to escape the spectre of Victor Senior’s betrayal.” Sherlock set his mug down and put his elbows on his knees, letting his hands fall in front of his legs and his head tip forward; a few errant curls tumbled down across his forehead. “As far as I know, he’s not spoken with them since.”

“Wow,” John said, setting down his mug. “That’s… that’s horrible, actually. I feel sorry for him, but it isn’t your fault, Sherlock. You can’t blame yourself. Maybe you were inappropriate in your delivery, but you didn’t make it up. Victor Senior was a right bastard, it sounds like, and the way they all reacted to it wasn’t your responsibility.”

Sherlock frowned, and John edged even closer. He touched Sherlock lightly on the thigh. “You couldn’t have known. You were so young. Only…” John faltered, remembering Mycroft’s words. “Before he left… when you… _did_ he hurt you?”

Sherlock was quiet for a long moment.

John was about to retract the question when Sherlock finally spoke. “As I've told you, he was my only friend. I knew that I had caused him immeasurable pain, and I was—inexperienced with the feeling of remorse, the desire to rectify my actions. I knew I’d taken everything from him. There was only one thing he’d ever wanted that he’d not been able to have, and that was,” Sherlock swallowed. “That was me.”

“Oh, _Sherlock_ ,” John whispered.

Sherlock laughed, but it was brittle and sad. “You see, you didn’t get it wrong either. That _is_ how I tried to fix things. I tried to make him stay. He took what I had to offer, and he left just the same.”

John’s hands curled almost involuntarily into fists. “Right,” he said between gritted teeth, "I’m only sorry I didn’t punch him clear off that balcony, is what I think.”

“It’s in the past, John. It wouldn’t’ve been worth it.”

“He took advantage of you!”

Sherlock shrugged. “I suppose he didn’t think of it that way. Clearly he felt I still owed him something. At first I’m sure he saw a chance to make money off of my name—that wouldn’t have evened the stakes, of course, but it isn’t nothing, and my guess is he was looking for a way in, a way to find more.”

“Sex isn’t currency, Sherlock. It doesn’t work like that. It _shouldn’t_ work like that.” John loosened a fist to run a hand through his hair.

“Anyway, it wasn’t sex that he was after, you know that. He wanted to take from me the equivalent of what I cost him. Simply by being there with me, you inadvertently gave him the opportunity to settle an almost decade-old score.”

“That’s the thing though,” John said, squinting at the memory, “when you told him, out on the balcony, and when _I_ told him it was true, that we aren’t—that we _weren’t_ ,” John wasn’t sure what they had finally become during this interminable night in which they’d gone through seemingly every possible iteration of acquaintance, but he knew it was more than what they were when it had started, “he didn’t seem surprised. He told me he already knew.”

“And?”

“And… well, if he knew we weren’t together, I’m still not sure why he kept after me,” John licked his lips. “Not that it matters, of course. It just doesn’t really fit, does it?”

“John,” Sherlock turned fully toward him, his voice fathoms-deep and utterly serious, “just because he knew that we were not together does not mean he was unable to see that losing you would destroy me. That if he wanted to take everything I loved from me, you would be the primary target.”

“Oh,” John said, and then for lack of anything else to say, repeated, “oh.”

Sherlock eyed him. “I did tell you.”

“I know,” John replied, “you did. I just didn’t think… it’s just. He said something else. That you’d done it to me too, taken everything from me, and you’d do it again, just to solve a puzzle. That I would always be on the side, always come second. I didn’t want to believe it, but… well it’s a little bit true, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why I’ve been so angry with you. You found something interesting to do, and you left me.” John could hear himself getting louder and sharper as he barrelled on, unable to stop the words from pouring unbidden from someplace inside him where the wound still smarted, still hadn’t quite begun to heal. “You left me by myself and chased after a ghost for two years because you needed to _solve a_ _puzzle_. And yeah, you saved my life, and you did it to protect me, and you’ve come back and you love me and and I love you and we’re not pretending anymore, but —” John cut himself off, tried to control his breathing. “But Sherlock, I swear to god, if you ever do that to me again—”

“John,” Sherlock broke in, and he took John’s right hand and wrapped both of his larger hands around it, pulled it close to him, almost touching his chest. His eyes were pale grey in the dim light and John could see his own reflection in the pupils. “Do not think for one moment that I did any of that, that I allowed a single moment of our separation to occur for any reason other than in the hope of having even the most remote chance of returning to you.”

“God, Sherlock,” John said, his voice catching on a whimper, and then he pushed the hand Sherlock was holding into Sherlock’s chest, grabbed Sherlock’s shirt and pulled him forward, pulled Sherlock’s mouth to his. It was a ghost of their earlier kiss, all desperation but no violence, just the insistent slide of lips against lips, and John licked into Sherlock’s mouth and swallowed the sob that escaped his throat as Sherlock brought his hands up to cup John’s face gently, reverently; with a final, longing nibble, John pulled back.

“I can’t promise I won’t do everything in my power to ensure your safety,” Sherlock breathed in dulcet tones between beestung lips, resting his forehead against John’s and exhaling hot across his face, “I can’t promise that I wouldn’t do it again, if I had to. You’d do the same for me; don’t try to deny it.”

“Yeah,” John sighed, “you know I would.”

Sherlock drew back. “So where does that leave us?”

“I dunno,” John confessed, “but it’s better. It’s going to get better.” He took a long breath. “There’s still a lot to work out, but at least it’s all out there now. At least we’ve said everything, and we both seem to want the same outcome.”

Sherlock nodded slowly. He gave John a careful, inscrutable look. “I just wanted—if you could, that is—it doesn’t have to—” he averted his gaze. “Nothing has to happen,” he added hastily.

“Tell me,” John said gently.

“Would you stay with me, tonight? Just for a few hours. To sleep. I think it would be best if I slept.” Sherlock’s voice was soft and anxious, halting every few words, and his uncertainty filled John’s chest with a warm ache.

He leaned forward to draw Sherlock’s top lip between his own, sucked and nipped at it, murmured into his skin, “Of course I will.”


	7. Chapter 7

To look at Sherlock Holmes, one might theorise that he was bodily rather hard and cold, made up entirely of angles and ice. In practise, John was delighted to find, Sherlock was actually very smooth and warm and pleasingly curved in the places that mattered, and though his frame was wiry and firm and lithely muscular, his skin was softer than a man in his mid-thirties’ had any right to be, and his long limbs loaned themselves helpfully to accommodating John’s smaller, stockier body by finding narrow spaces between John and the bed to worm their way around him.

They had started out cautiously, wordlessly going about their nighttime rituals; John had gone first, showering the acrid smell of pub out of his skin, and before he could lose his nerve, crawled into Sherlock’s bed in his vest and pants to wait. Sherlock always took at least twice as long as John did to shower.

Once they were both in bed, they’d shifted their bodies to lie on their sides facing one another, connected only by the interlaced fingers of their hands where they held them together between their chests. John had smiled, leaned up to press his mouth once to Sherlock’s forehead, then the tip of his nose, and finally, the corner of his mouth before saying, “Sleep, now,” and allowing himself to drift off as Sherlock did, measuring his own breath by the rhythm of his partner’s.

At some point in the middle of the night one of them had woken, and then the other, and John had a dim memory of Sherlock wrapping himself around John entirely, pushing his face into the hair on the top of John’s head and huffing deep, balmy breaths as he wound his outer leg around John’s thigh and insinuated his other knee between John’s. John had sighed contentedly, pressed his cheek against the clean cotton of Sherlock’s tee shirt, and used his hands to rub soothing circular patterns across Sherlock’s back as they both faded rapidly back into slumber.

Hours later, in the greyed-out glow of the drizzling London morning, John awoke to find himself completely devoid of duvet, but none the worse for it, as he instead was amply covered in the warm, lanky body of his bedmate, who was spread out over him like a Sherlock-skin rug, limbs sprawled, head tucked into the side of John’s face, his breath puffing humidly into John’s ear. John let out a happy little yawn and raised an arm to set his hand on Sherlock’s head. He stroked gently, twining his fingers into Sherlock’s messy curls, smoothing them down and ruffling them up again, running from the crown of Sherlock’s head to the tiny curl at the nape of his neck. As he felt Sherlock’s breathing quicken and his body stir, John twisted that little curl around his forefinger, using his thumb to rub beneath Sherlock’s ear.

“Morning,” he said.

“Mmm.” John felt the deep rumble of Sherlock’s voice as though it moved directly from Sherlock’s chest into his own without bypassing throat or tongue or lips. “That feels nice.”

“Could feel nicer; let me up,” John said, tapping Sherlock lightly on the shoulder.

Sherlock reluctantly lifted his head a few centimetres, and John slid up from beneath him, pushing his pillow behind his back to lean against the headboard of Sherlock’s bed. He rolled the tension out of his shoulder and shook out his arm before lifting it above Sherlock. “There,” he said, “put your head down now.”

Sherlock complied, snuggling into John’s belly, his jaw just grazing John’s hipbone. After a moment, he plucked at John’s ribbed vest with long, impatient fingers, raised his head and said, “Off. Take this off.”

“Keen, are we?”

“I don’t like the way it feels. It’s got those lines,” he sniffed.

John pulled off his vest, flinging it to the corner of the bedroom. “And will your majesty be requiring anything else this morning?”

“Tea, eventually,” Sherlock replied, “but for the moment, you can go back to what you were doing. Your stomach’s much nicer this way; it’s soft.”

“Oi!” John protested, swatting Sherlock lightly across the ear, “my stomach is not _soft_!”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I like it. It’s comfortable.”

“Oh, well _thanks_ ,” muttered John. “That’s high praise, coming from a man with abs so flat they’re practically concave!” John was not unaware that he wasn’t at his fighting weight from army days, but he was fit enough to chase Sherlock and his stupidly long legs all over London, and he was certainly not _comfortable_. He just didn’t have Sherlock’s insane metabolism, or his total disregard for his own body’s need for nourishment; and, though it did irk him a little to admit it, he was _middle-aged_.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Sherlock cajoled, rubbing his cheek against the soft light brown fur on John’s lower abdomen. “It’s wonderful. It’s topographical. It has volume and resistance, it pushes and insists. _Flat_ is _boring_. Your belly is far more…” Sherlock paused and turned his face into John’s middle. John let out a high giggle as Sherlock huffed damp breath into his navel, and then a loud yelp as he felt the sharp sting of teeth closing around sensitive flesh. “Mmm… _interesting_.”

“You did _not_ just bite me,” John growled, and he yanked a little on Sherlock’s curls. Sherlock grunted, pushing his face harder against John and baring his teeth as John squirmed. “Don’t you dare —”

Before Sherlock could get in a good nibble, John twisted away, pushing Sherlock’s head off of him and rolling them both over. He moved swiftly down Sherlock’s body and sat across his thighs, but not quickly enough to avoid Sherlock wrapping his long fingers around John’s wrists and pulling John forward and down. He held John’s arms apart, keeping him still for long enough to lean up and nip at John’s lower lip before using his leverage to flip them both back over again, pinning John to the bed with his body.

John struggled half-heartedly, laughing as Sherlock pressed his face into the side of his neck, nuzzling and biting with what felt like deliberate impertinence. “All right, all right, you’ve proved your point.”

Then John felt a hot palm slide down his body and rub over his erection, which had been hovering at half-mast for most of the morning, but was rapidly becoming interested in the current proceedings. “Have I?” Sherlock intoned in a sly drawl, and gave John a small, torturous squeeze.

John groaned softly, and then all of a sudden Sherlock was a flurry of limbs and blankets and skin, yanking at the waistband of John’s pants with one hand as he shoved the other down the back of them, prying John’s mouth open with his own and plundering with lips and teeth and tongue. John choked a little into Sherlock’s mouth and pulled away. “Whoa, whoa—hey!” He grabbed Sherlock’s hands and brought them back up between their bodies. “Is there a deadline that I don’t know about?”

Sherlock eyed him suspiciously. “You were hard.”

“Ye-es,” John said slowly, “that’ll happen when someone you’re attracted to starts kissing you in bed. And?”

“You—I thought you wanted me.”

John laughed. “I _want_ you. Present tense. It doesn’t go away when I’m not…” John tipped his head down toward his own body. “I’m not going to change my mind. You don’t have to… not that I don’t _want_ you to, but…”

Sherlock’s expression was of such doubtful bewilderment that John paused to reach up and tweak one of his bed-rumpled curls between his fingers. “Sherlock,” he began slowly, “have you ever had sex just because you wanted to?”

“There are different ways to want something,” Sherlock replied evasively.

John sighed as he stroked his hand down Sherlock’s cheek, his heart breaking a little at knowing the answer even before he asked, “Hasn’t anyone ever just wanted to make you feel good?”

Sherlock exhaled heavily and flopped over onto his back, resting his hands on his chest and turning his face away. “I suppose that in the past, I made it clear enough that my own pleasure was not my chief concern. What does it matter? It’s just sex, John. I want to have it with you. I want to be certain that you enjoy it.”

John turned onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow to lean over Sherlock’s face. He brought the other hand up to turn Sherlock’s chin toward him. “It’s _not_ just sex, Sherlock. Not with you, with _us_. I want to have it with you, too. Can you even begin to understand how much I want that? I’m not worried about whether or not I’ll enjoy it. I’m going to enjoy the _hell_ out of it. But I _am_ worried that you don’t know how much it _does_ matter.”

“I just—that isn’t what I meant,” Sherlock said quietly.

“Good,” John said. He trailed his fingers over Sherlock’s clavicle and down the center of his chest before laying his palm flat on Sherlock’s sternum. “Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but _this_ ,” he gestured between them, “us, not just sex, but the work and the flat and the demanding of tea and biscuits at all hours of the night and the body parts in the fridge and the way we feel about each other, all of it, matters more to me than anything. This means something to me. I need it to mean something to you too, Sherlock, because for me, _this_ is _everything_.”

Sherlock was quiet for a long moment. Then he leaned up, wrapped one arm around John’s neck and pulled him down into a slow and searing kiss. His mouth moved desperately against John’s, pulling John’s lips between his own and stroking all along the inside of John’s mouth with his tongue. It went on for what felt like hours, the hot, smooth slide of Sherlock’s lips and tongue, echoed John’s words back into his mouth and down his throat, pushed them all the way back down into John’s heart.

They broke apart and John stared down at Sherlock, appraised him with lust-clouded eyes. “Good,” he said finally, “that’s good.”

“John,” Sherlock said, an edge of panic in his voice, “I don’t know that I’ll always… I don’t know that I know how to be with you the way that you want.”

John smiled. “I think you do.”

Sherlock shook his head. “I’ll be rude and impatient and forget about things that matter to you, and sometimes I won’t come to bed when you want or at all if I’m on a case, and I’ll demand things from you and assume that my gratitude is a given that need not be expressed,” the words poured fast and thick into the air between them, “I won’t make tea, or clean more, or cook ever.”

“Right,” John said, “so basically, you’ll be exactly as you are, and I’ll be exactly as I am, only we’ll both be getting laid more often.”

“John.”

“I know, Sherlock. You’ll make mistakes. You know what, so will I. But if there’s anything we know how to do, it’s how to be with each other.” He kissed Sherlock, closed-lipped and sweet, on side of his mouth. “We’ve always been with each other. I just took a few years, and a couple of lifetimes, to understand that.”

Half of Sherlock’s mouth quirked up in a wry grin. “Knew you’d get there eventually.”

“Smartarse,” John rejoined, and he kissed him again, a tentative and soft thing that deepened, grew more intense as John curled his body around Sherlock’s, resting his chest against Sherlock’s chest as he braced his body on hands and knees around Sherlock’s frame. “Now, I do want you. You weren’t wrong about that. But I want you to feel how much I want you. I want you to let me show you. I want to make you feel good. Can I? Will you let me?”

Sherlock’s nod was almost imperceptible, and he squeezed his eyes shut as John began nuzzling at his cheekbone, brushing his nose along Sherlock’s nose, briefly catching and then dropping Sherlock’s upper lip with his own lips. “Hey,” John breathed, “where are you? Come back. If you want me to stop, just say so and I will.”

Sherlock opened his eyes.

John smiled down at him, kissed his mouth again and again, just little nips and presses of lips against lips, before moving his hands down to grip the bottom edge of Sherlock’s tee shirt. “Up,” he said, and Sherlock lifted his arms, allowing John to remove his shirt and reveal the flat planes of his chest and belly that glowed a milky-pale colour in the dim morning light. John used his fingertips to trace light paths all over him, brushing over clusters of freckles and the sparse patches of hair that grew over and between his pectorals.

“Gorgeous,” John said, running his hands over Sherlock’s nipples just to feel them harden and strain for his attention, rolling them between his fingers before dragging his nails down Sherlock’s abdomen and hooking his hands around the waist of Sherlock’s pyjamas. Sherlock twitched and jumped under John’s touch, and his breath came hard out of his chest, a tiny moan escaping his throat as John moved further down his body.

John paused as he hovered over Sherlock’s clothed groin. “This okay?” He asked, pulling at the pyjamas meaningfully.

“Please,” Sherlock rasped. John grinned and lifted the waistband over where Sherlock was hard between his legs, and then all the way down, yanking them from around his ankles and tossing them away. He sat back, just to the side of Sherlock, Sherlock who was nude and supine and breathing as though he’d just run all the way across London, and John inhaled deeply to steady himself as he looked his fill.

Sherlock was pale all over, except where he was flushed pink, the blood-heated glow of his kiss-swollen mouth and the edges of his cheekbones echoed in the high colour on his throat and chest, his small, rosy nipples and at the tip of his penis, which was where his skin was darkest, retracted and throbbing against his abdomen, the base of it resting in a small thatch of dark curls.

“Fucking hell,” John whispered, “is there any part of you that isn’t bloody gorgeous?”

Sherlock closed his eyes and shook his head minutely. John took Sherlock’s hand and brought it to his mouth, placing a reverent kiss on Sherlock’s palm. “In case I haven’t made myself clear, I think now is a good time to tell you that I love you,” he said. “So much.”

With the hand still held up to John’s face, Sherlock cupped John’s cheek, beckoning him down into a kiss, and John felt Sherlock’s lower lip tremble a little. “Would you take off your pants,” Sherlock said against John’s mouth.

John pulled back. “What?”

“Your pants. Would you—I’d rather it not be just me.”

Wordlessly, John stood from the bed and stripped. He climbed back on, sliding his hands up Sherlock’s thighs to gently spread them so he could settle between Sherlock’s legs. He brought his hands back down, resting them on Sherlock’s knees as he watched Sherlock, propped up on his elbows, focus his gaze on John’s body, cataloguing every dip and curve, scar and wrinkle. He felt the sultry beam of Sherlock’s stare as it ran down his abdomen, over his thighs and between his legs to where his erection jutted out, thick and hot and a dark red-purple at the head. John squeezed Sherlock’s knees. “Better?”

“Much,” Sherlock said, his voice low and desire-wrecked. John ran his hands back up the insides of Sherlock’s thighs and then curved them down and around underneath. He pulled up, bending Sherlock’s knees and pushing his legs back until Sherlock had a foot planted to either side of John, his legs splayed wide, exposing where John wanted to touch him.

“Lie back,” John instructed, “and tilt your hips up a bit, there. Like that.” He grabbed the pillow he’d used to sleep and pushed it beneath the small of Sherlock’s back to allow him better access. Sherlock had thrown his head back against his own pillow with an arm flung over his face and was panting heavily against the inside of his elbow. “Tell me if this isn’t okay,” John said. Sherlock whimpered, but nodded.

John repositioned his body so the tops of his thighs were flat on the bed, and he pushed up on his arms to admire Sherlock up close. He leaned down and ran a careful hand over Sherlock’s cock, gripping it in his fist and smoothing his thumb over the plummy, leaking head. Sherlock let out a little cry, but it wasn’t one of protest, and John stroked the length of him several more times before leaning down to press an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of Sherlock’s thigh.

Sherlock shuddered and groaned, thrusting himself up into the firm circle of John’s fingers. John smoothed a hand down Sherlock’s leg, urging him to settle. “You like that,” he said, and then bent his head again to lick a wet stripe from the base of Sherlock’s cock to the tip, wrapping his mouth around the head and using his tongue to rub against the sensitive frenulum before pulling off to lave all over the glans, lapping at the slit. He could feel Sherlock trying to breathe around deep, gravel-rough moans.

John replaced his hand around Sherlock’s cock and stroked him as he leaned even further down between Sherlock’s legs. He huffed warm breath over Sherlock’s testicles in a silent warning before taking one into his mouth, rolling it around on his tongue and releasing it to favour the other with the same attentions. Sherlock gasped and bucked a little, and John brought his other hand up to hold on to the sharp angle of Sherlock’s hipbone. He licked a few times more before dragging his tongue along the seam in the middle, down and under, until his mouth met the soft skin of Sherlock’s perineum. John raised his head and Sherlock gave a muffled cry.

“Sherlock,” John said, his voice gone husky with want, “I’m going to need my hands. I’m going to make you feel good, but I want you to make yourself feel good, too. Will you do that for me? Will you touch yourself, for me?”

Sherlock choked out a groan that John took as an affirmative, and he released Sherlock’s cock, running his hands down over the sensitive crease between Sherlock’s abdomen and thighs before widening his fingers, splaying one palm on the underside of each of Sherlock’s buttocks, kneading and massaging with his fingertips.

He spread Sherlock a bit, encouraged by the wanton sounds that echoed out of Sherlock’s chest and throat and down into John’s body. He groaned a little himself at the overwhelming combination of Sherlock’s moans and Sherlock’s scent, earthy and musky and a little spicy, like that stupidly expensive soap John wasn’t allowed to use, and his mouth watered. He leaned in and licked, leaving a hot trail of saliva from Sherlock’s perineum down into the cleft of his arse, then pulled back and blew cool air over it. Sherlock shuddered and made a noise like he might be weeping, and John looked up to find Sherlock’s long, beautiful fingers wrapped around his own cock, tugging slowly, the digits of his other hand gripping his shaking thigh so hard that the tips were white.

“John,” Sherlock moaned, “don’t _stop_.”

“Jesus,” John breathed, “I’m not, I swear I’m not, I just wanted to see—just _look_ at you.” Sherlock let out a high whine and moved his fist around his cock a little faster. John swore. “Christ, that’s gorgeous.”

“ _Please_ ,” Sherlock sobbed.

John pulled Sherlock even further apart, leaned down, and ran his hot tongue all the way down, over and around the little furled knot of his entrance. It fluttered against his tongue as Sherlock tensed and shivered and groaned above him. “Fuck,” Sherlock gritted out, “John, _fuck_.”

John smiled into Sherlock’s skin as he pushed his spit-slicked lips against him, used his tongue to tease and rub at the sensitive opening. It smoothed and relaxed under his mouth and he lapped at it urgently, pressing obscene kisses to the skin around it. He firmed and pointed his tongue, pushing against the softened skin, and it yielded to him as he worked it, slowly thrusting his wet velvet tongue in and out of Sherlock, with each pass pushing in just a bit deeper. He suckled Sherlock’s entrance as he licked inside it, feeling Sherlock shudder and clench around him, and at a particularly violent spasm, pulled out and away, raising his head to see Sherlock’s hands working himself furiously, the fat head of his cock leaking all over his fingers and into the hair that curled at his groin.

“You’re close,” John said, and Sherlock nodded, face flushed, sweat beading all along his hairline and mouth, rolling down his neck and into the notch at the base of his throat. He moved himself up over Sherlock’s cock again. “Put your hands in my hair,” he said, and took Sherlock into his hand and mouth again, pumping and bobbing hungrily, moving his other hand down between Sherlock’s buttocks and pressing into him with one finger. Sherlock was still wet and a little open, and John pushed in another finger, stroking inside, searching and _pressing_.

Sherlock yelped, clutching at John’s hair with his fingers, pushing up into John’s mouth. John felt Sherlock throb and tense all at once, and then, with a long, low groan, pulse and spill hot onto John’s tongue, convulsing and bucking against John’s hold. John stroked him, keeping Sherlock in his mouth until he felt Sherlock’s limbs tremble and collapse boneless around him. He released him then, pulling his fingers free, and Sherlock whimpered.

“God,” John said, crawling up to lie next to Sherlock, “that was incredible. You are incredible.”

Sherlock grunted a little, his breathing still heavy. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Yeah, you did.” John pressed a small kiss to the little cluster of freckles on the side of Sherlock’s throat. “You let me do that to you. With you.”

Sherlock hummed. “What are we going to do to you?”

John smiled against Sherlock’s neck. “Anything you like. There’s no hurry.”

Sherlock reached down and John gasped as long, warm fingers wrapped around him. “I want to touch you,” Sherlock said.

“Yeah, got that,” John panted as Sherlock’s thumb smoothed over the head of his cock and his hand did an expert little twist.

“I want to taste every part of you and keep a catalogue of all the flavours and their differences,” Sherlock turned and put his mouth against John’s ear, licking the shell and nibbling at the lobe and John cried out as Sherlock’s other hand found its way to his chest and pinched one of his nipples. “I want to cover you in things and lick them off again.”

John groaned as Sherlock bent his head to take John’s other nipple into his mouth, teeth just grazing the sensitive nub. “Christ.”

Sherlock shifted onto his stomach, leaning over John to mouth his way down his chest and belly. He bit once again at the skin below John’s navel. “You taste different here, but you’re still delicious, John. I want to bite you and suck on you. I want to eat you alive,” Sherlock growled, and he dipped down and took John’s cock swiftly into his mouth, not stopping until the head hit the back of his throat and his nose was buried in the wiry brown hair at the base.

“Ungh!” John yelped, and, unable to help himself, buried his fingers in Sherlock’s messy curls, pulling and twisting them. “You— _ah_! You’ve done this before,” he said.

Sherlock swallowed around John and then pulled up, his tongue running all along the underside of John’s cock before he released it with a slurp. “Problem?”

“No, you barmy bastard, it is _not_ a _problem_ ,” John said, “it’s _brilliant_.”

Sherlock’s mouth spread into a feline little grin before he ducked back down, taking John all the way into the heat of his mouth and throat, bobbing and swallowing and swirling his tongue so adroitly that it was all John could do to hang on, moaning and cursing and thrusting up into Sherlock’s mouth, before the orgasm that had been building since the moment he’d woken up with Sherlock wrapped around him threatened to overtake him. “Sherlock,” he warned.

Sherlock hummed around John’s cock and John shut his eyes, feeling the vibration coax him inexorably over the edge and he groaned deep in his chest as he came, felt Sherlock drink him down as he throbbed and pulsed into Sherlock’s throat. “Oh fuck,” he moaned, shivering as Sherlock pulled off and the cool air hit him. “Jesus.”

John lay back, raising an arm to wrap around Sherlock as he slid back up to rest against John’s side. They were quiet for long moments, breathing in tandem, listening to the rain patter a soft beat against the window. Finally, Sherlock raised his head to look down at John. His eyes were set and serious.

“That um, that thing. That you said before.”

John’s brow furrowed.

“Before you—before we. I do, too.” Sherlock’s eyes wandered to a spot on John’s forehead and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “I, uh. As well.”

Recognition crossed John’s face, and then a smile, and warmth pooled in his belly and chest, spread all through his limbs, washed over him pleasant as a hot bath. He pushed his fingers into Sherlock’s hair, goading his head forward and pulling up to meet him in a sweet kiss.

“I know,” he said.

 

*

 

In the weeks that followed that long, delicious morning, John learned that while things couldn’t stay exactly the same, he wasn’t far off the mark when he’d said they’d really always been together, and that by and large, they already knew how. Being in a romantic relationship with Sherlock Holmes was about as John expected it to be; for all the things that came naturally to Sherlock, romance wasn’t one of them. John hadn’t expected it to, and having the advantage of speaking nearly fluent Sherlock, as well as the kind of patience a man could only have for another person whom he loved beyond all reason, he allowed himself to be a bit of a shock absorber for bumps in the road, though he did his utmost to guide Sherlock in the art of finding smoother paths to take in the future.

It didn’t hurt that the sex continued to be spectacular.

Nonetheless, Sherlock Holmes was no lothario, which was why John was more than a little surprised to be summoned to an expensive dinner, on an otherwise ordinary Thursday evening, at a restaurant with a dress code that required him to wear the beautiful grey suit that Sherlock had given him.

They sat at a small square table at the corner of a booth, Sherlock facing the door and John just to his left, intimate and romantic and candlelit, and John reached over to squeeze Sherlock’s hand before taking up a menu and peering at it.

“Sherlock, surely this is a bit out of our price range?” John ran his eye over the selections, which did not feature prices, and were written entirely in French.

“Nonsense. I bought you the suit, and I insist that you use it,” Sherlock replied, taking John’s menu from him. “I’ll not have my only memory of seeing you like this be that utter failure of an evening pretending to care about Victor Trevor’s charity work. And don’t worry about ordering. We’ll both have the chef’s tasting menu with the wine pairings, and I’ll not hear another word about it.”

John winced. “I forgot to mention it, but I did actually run into your brother, and he more or less let on that he bou— _gave_ you the suit to give to me.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “He _does_ insist upon continuing to breathe,” he complained. “Well, then, I suppose the price of dinner should concern you even less, as it’s all going on Mycroft’s credit card. I acquired it ages ago. For emergencies.” He smirked. “This is a very serious emergency.”

“Ah, I see,” John laughed, “a very serious emergency requiring French wines and cheeses and eight other courses besides.”

“Obviously.”

They ordered and they ate, John marvelling at how delicious things could be when he couldn’t begin to pronounce their names, slowly getting buzzily warm and sleepily happy on heavy food and expensive wine and the kind of conversation he could only have with Sherlock. As their final plate was cleared away and the server had poured them the cognac meant to round out their meal, John leaned back in his seat and rubbed his hands across his stomach, sighing contentedly. “That,” he said, “was amazing.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“I’ve never seen you eat so much!”

Sherlock shrugged. “I like watching you enjoy your food. It makes me hungry.” John grinned.

Just then there was movement across the room as a the maître d’ rushed over to the front the restaurant, babbling in quick French and pulling heavy wool coats from the shoulders of the patrons who had just entered. John’s stomach rolled a little as the group came into view. “Oh, no, not again, not tonight, this is _not_ happening,” he muttered.

“What is it?” Sherlock asked.

“ _That_ wanker,” John said, nodding toward the scene in front of them.

There were two women, dark-skinned and lovely in the most regal sort of way, all long, graceful neck and subtle gestures. One of them somewhere around sixty and the other closer to thirty, both dressed impeccably and thoughtfully in complimentary colours to one another, each bearing more than a passing resemblance to the other; likely mother and daugher. Beside them, tall and broad and gleaming with predatory grace, was Victor Trevor.

Victor’s eyes scanned the crowd and he spotted them. John tried to turn away, but as he did, noticed Sherlock was holding Victor’s gaze, steady and inscrutable. Finally, Sherlock nodded, just once, and Victor slowly nodded back before moving to follow his dinner companions into the dining room.

“What,” John demanded angrily, “was _that_?”

“ _That_ ,” Sherlock replied, “was Victor Trevor, in the company of his mother and his sister. His heretofore estranged mother and sister.”

John swallowed back the curse that had been threatening to roll off his tongue. “Oh.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, pulling his napkin from his lap and setting it on the table next to his drink, “it seems that perhaps Victor has realised a thing or two about forgiveness. I wonder where he might have learnt that?”

John was silent then, choosing instead to take a small, satisfying pull from his glass of brandy. After a moment, Sherlock shot up in his seat as if he’d been poked in the bottom with a pin.

“You know, we really ought to go,” Sherlock’s voice had changed to something brisk and businesslike, and without ceremony he stood and reached down to pull hard at John’s sleeve. “I’ve already paid the bill.”

"All right, all right I'm coming—god, Sherlock, if you're in such a hurry, why don't you go on ahead and get us a taxi?" John was thwarted from taking his last sip of cognac by Sherlock's impatient hand gripping his forearm and yanking him upright from his seat.

"Because I want to look at the pudding menu."

"The pudding menu?" John asked, confused. “But we’ve already had pudding, _and_ we’ve paid. Well, Mycroft has.”

Sherlock pushed John in front of him. "Nevermind that; just walk," he directed, sparing John a little tap on the backside.

John paused and looked over his shoulder at Sherlock, raising his brow. "This whole bloody evening is just about my arse in these ridiculously posh trousers, isn't it?"

Sherlock grinned and licked his lips. "Let's go home, John. I know exactly what I want."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Stitchy ( **tallenough** ) for the idea that I thought would be a simple little 5k one-off that refused to stop growing; to Leslie ( **scullyseviltwin** ) for listening to me complain about this fic basically every day for weeks upon weeks, for brainstorming and idea-wrangling, and for reading it as I wrote it, and loving it anyway; and to Erin ( **ScienceofObsession** ), who is an excellent and gentle beta and without whom this story would have suffered.
> 
> So, some people were giddy with imagining what it might be like to have Idris Elba as Victor towering over John. Now we don't have to imagine; [Sam](http://watsonsdick.tumblr.com) has made [gorgeous art](http://lesbianchrispine.tumblr.com/post/66776255563/anotherwellkeptsecret-watsonsdick) depicting the balcony scene from chapter 4.
> 
> Another lovely person has made art for my fic! [khorazir](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/) has made [a beautiful drawing](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/67873704825/i-cant-promise-that-i-wouldnt-do-it-again-if-i) depicting the closing scene from chapter 6. Please take a look!
> 
> My life is an embarrassment of riches, as BC would say; [Kelley](http://anotherwellkeptsecret.tumblr.com/) has drawn an [absolutely breathtaking comic](http://lesbianchrispine.tumblr.com/post/68841565049/anotherwellkeptsecret-for-the-lovely) depicting the closing scene of ch 6 as well. Thank you so, so much!
> 
> My wifepiece [Camille](http://camillekaze.tumblr.com/) has done a blessed mitzvah and drawn the [TUMMY SNUGGLES](http://lesbianchrispine.tumblr.com/post/68975778231/camillekaze-belly-snuggles-for-allison-and-her) from ch 7 and I _cannot get over it_.
> 
> follow me on [tumblr](http://lesbianchrispine.tumblr.com/) if ya like.


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